The Iraq-Niger Uranium Controversy and the Outing of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson

An examination of the events surrounding the US and British claims that Iraq tried to purchase ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Niger, and the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of an attempt to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson.

Miller, Abrams, and Cooper speak to reporters during the Libby investigation. [Source: Life magazine]Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter held in contempt for failing to obey a subpoena to testify before the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see October 7, 2004), tells her husband that she may go to jail. “Something bad is happening,” Miller tells Jason Epstein, her husband and a founder of the New York Review of Books. “I think I might be going to jail.” Epstein replies, “Going to jail—that can’t be right.” Miller says, “That is where this is going to lead.” Trying to lighten the mood, Epstein retorts, “Well, if that’s the case, get a lawyer from the Yellow Pages so it won’t cost so much.” Miller says she already has a lawyer, renowned First Amendment advocate Floyd Abrams. With another lawyer, Abrams had represented the Times in the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 (see June 15, 1971), and he helped to forge case law protecting journalists from being compelled to reveal their sources. Abrams is already representing another Times reporter, Philip Shenon, against Fitzgerald in the case of Shenon’s reporting on an FBI raid of two Muslim charities accused of supporting terrorism (see December 3-14, 2001). He is also defending two more Times reporters, James Risen and Jeff Gerth, in a privacy lawsuit filed by nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who is accusing the reporters of inaccurate and defamatory reporting. And he is representing Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who is also facing a subpoena from the Fitzgerald investigation (see October 13, 2004). Abrams has asked Fitzgerald to steer clear of subpoenaing reporters such as Miller and Cooper, fearing the effect those subpoenas might have on investigative reporting if successful. Fitzgerald told Abrams that he had thought through the issue, and was prepared to compel their testimony through the entire judicial system. [Vanity Fair, 4/2006]

Columnist and media observer Allan Wolper notes that while conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson apparently at the behest of the White House (see July 14, 2003), continues to “spout… off in his syndicated column, he keeps a secret he would not permit any politician to get away with.” Wolper is writing of Novak’s continued refusal to divulge whether he was subpoenaed by the grand jury investigating the case, or if he testified before that grand jury. Wolper calls it an “untenable ethical position,” and bolsters his position with observations from media ethicists such as Robert Steele, the director of ethics for the Poynter Institute of Media Studies. “If he has a justifiable reason to withhold that information, he should give a reason why,” Steele says. “Otherwise, he is undermining his credibility as an honest broker of ethical journalism. If he were on the other side, he would challenge journalists for not saying anything.” Novak is defended by, among others, Washington Post reporter and assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who says: “Bob Novak has taken a stand that is supported by many in the press. He is protecting his sources. He has done nothing that is illegal or improper.” (Wolper is unaware as of this writing that Woodward has his own secondary involvement in the case, having been himself told of Plame Wilson’s identity several times before (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, and June 27, 2003).) Wolper notes that while Novak has refused to speak about subpoenas or testimonies, Post reporters Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus have both given sworn depositions to the grand jury (see June 22, 2004 and September 15, 2004). Wolper writes, “They might have been able to fight off their subpoenas if their lawyers had known whether Novak… had been called by the grand jury.” Aside from Kessler and Pincus, Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see July 17, 2003) testified after being threatened with jail (see May 21, 2004, August 24, 2004, July 6, 2005, and July 13, 2005), and New York Times reporter Judith Miller is facing jail rather than testify (see December 2004). “Novak has an obligation to own up,” Wolper writes. Instead, “Novak continues to live a charmed life in journalism, writing his column and appearing regularly on CNN, where he is never challenged.” CNN media critic Jeff Greenfield says of Novak’s case, “I haven’t thought it through. I don’t want to talk about it, because I have no opinion on it.” Jack Nelson, the retired bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, says: “This whole thing is really strange. Novak was the guy who wrote the column that exposed the CIA agent, and yet they don’t seem to be going after him.” [Editor & Publisher, 12/1/2004]

Matt Cooper and Judith Miller. [Source: Paul J.Richards / AFP / Getty Images (left) and New York Times (right)]An appeals court rules 3-0 that reporters Judith Miller (see August 12, 2004 and After) and Matthew Cooper (see October 13, 2004) must testify in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003). Both the New York Times and Time magazine will appeal the ruling to a full appeals court and eventually to the Supreme Court (see June 27, 2005). The appeals court rules that because Miller and Cooper may have witnessed a federal crime—the disclosure of Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity by government officials (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003)—the First Amendment does not protect them from testifying to the possible crime. The court finds that a 1972 Supreme Court ruling, Branzburg v. Hayes, applies: in that case, a reporter was ordered to testify about witnessing the production of illegal drugs. Writing for the appeals court, Judge David Sentelle notes that the Supreme Court “stated that it could not ‘seriously entertain the notion that the First Amendment protects the newsman’s agreement to conceal the criminal conduct of his source, or evidence thereof, on the theory that it is better to write about a crime than to do something about it.’” [United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 12/8/2004 ; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger says of the ruling: “The Times will continue to fight for the ability of journalists to provide the people of this nation with the essential information they need to evaluate issues affecting our country and the world. And we will challenge today’s decision and advocate for a federal shield law that will enable the public to continue to learn about matters that directly affect their lives.” Miller says, “I risk going to jail for a story I didn’t write, for reasons a court won’t explain.” [New York Times, 2/16/2005]

Victoria Toensing. [Source: CNN via Media Matters]Lawyers for 36 media organizations file an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington asking that it overturn a decision to compel reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller to testify before a grand jury hearing evidence in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see February 15, 2005). The brief argues in part that neither Miller nor Cooper should be jailed because “the circumstances necessary to prove” a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) “seem not to be present here,” and therefore the trial court should be ordered to hold a hearing “to determine whether specific elements of the [IIPA]… have been met.” The request will be denied. One of the authors of the brief is Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, who with her husband Joseph diGenova heads a law firm with deep ties to the Republican Party. (Toensing was a Justice Department official during the Reagan administration and helped write the IIPA.) Toensing will write numerous op-eds and make frequent television appearances denouncing the investigation (see November 3, 2005, February 18, 2007, February 18, 2007, and March 16, 2007), usually without revealing her ties to the case. [US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court, 3/23/2005 ; Media Matters, 3/6/2007]

Journalist and radio host Ian Masters asks former CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro during an interview, in reference to the question of who forged the Niger documents (see March 2000), “If I were to say the name Michael Ledeen to you, what would you say?” Cannistraro replies, “You’re very close.” After the radio show, Ledeen denies in a statement that he has any connection to the documents. [Ian Master's Background Briefing, 4/3/2005]

The Supreme Court refuses to intervene in two reporters’ attempts to refuse to testify in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see February 15, 2005 and March 23, 2005). [Washington Post, 7/3/2007] One of the reporters, the New York Times’s Judith Miller, says she will go to jail rather than reveal her confidential sources. “Journalists simply cannot do their jobs without being able to commit to sources that they won’t be identified,” she says. “Such protection is critical to the free flow of information in a democracy.” Lawyers for the second reporter, Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper, say they will file a motion to reargue the case. [New York Times, 6/28/2005]

A few days after the Supreme Court’s refusal to quash the subpoenas of two reporters in the Valerie Plame Wilson case (see June 27, 2005), Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, pass one of the reporters, Matthew Cooper, on the street. Cooper buttonholes Wilson and, obviously struggling with himself, asks, “Could you do something for me?” Cooper asks Wilson if he would write the judge who ruled against Cooper and fellow reporter Judith Miller (see August 9, 2004) a letter asking for leniency for him. Wilson, whom his wife will describe as “taken aback,” tells Cooper that he will ask his lawyer about the request. Over dinner, the Wilsons marvel over Cooper’s request. They wonder if “Matt [had] momentarily lost his mind.” Plame Wilson will write: “A request from Joe for leniency on Matt’s behalf would carry little or no weight with the presiding judge. More pointedly, it was obviously in our interest to have the reporters testify. We, along with the entire country, wanted to hear what they would say under oath. We wanted to know what sources in the administration had leaked my name to the media, thereby undermining our national security.” More generally, Plame Wilson will reflect: “In the debate over whether reporters should be compelled to reveal their sources, it seemed to me that some of the leading advocates of reporters’ First Amendment rights had lost sight of a basic fact in this case: people in the administration had used reporters to advance their own political agenda. That alone is not unusual, or even criminal. But the reporters’ refusal to testify would not help to uncover government wrongdoing, but assist officials who wanted to cover up their illegal behavior. It was the Pentagon Papers (see March 1971) or Watergate (see June 15, 1974) turned on its head.… [T]his particular case was not about the freedom of the press, or about reporters’ roles as watchdogs on behalf of the governed, the citizens of this country. These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation. It didn’t make much ethical sense to me.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 220-221]

Italian document peddler Rocco Martino, who first sold the forged documents purporting to prove a secret uranium deal between Iraq and Niger (see March 2000, Late June 2002, Afternoon October 7, 2002, and Summer 2004), tells the British news daily The Guardian: “It was the Italians and Americans who were behind it. It was all a disinformation operation. [I was] a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 237]

According to CounterPunch, the Italian Parliament releases a report on the forged Iraq-Niger uranium documents (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The report names four people as the most likely forgers: neoconservative Michael Ledeen (see April 3, 2005), former CIA agent Duane Clarridge (see Late 1998), Iraqi National Congress (INC) head Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996 and February 2002), and Chalabi’s close friend and colleague Francis Brooke, who belongs to the Rendon Group, a public relations group formed by the Pentagon in part to promote Chalabi and the INC (see May 1991 and Mid-December 2003). The report suggests the forgeries may have been planeed at a December 2001 meeting in Rome (see December 9, 2001) that involved Ledeen, head of the Italian intelligence service SISMI Nicolo Pollari (see September 9, 2002), and accused spy Larry Franklin (see December 9, 2001). [CounterPunch, 11/1/2005; CounterPunch, 11/9/2005] When the report is publicized in November 2005, Italian government officials will deny the existence of any such report, a denial bolstered by media reports. Journalist Laura Rozen will write that no such report was ever produced, nor was a parliamentary investigation into the Niger forgeries held by the Italian parliament at the time. “There is no parliamentary report,” a spokeswoman for Enzo Bianco, a member of Italy’s parliament, will say. Nor is there an unpublished report, the spokeswoman will say. Rozen will write that Bianco’s spokeswoman “does not just appear to be engaged in a cover up of a secret report. No one in Italy seriously investigating the Niger forgeries has heard of such a report.” The Italian newspaper La Repubblica will also report that no such parliamentary report was ever written. Former CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, who will say he knew of rumors about such a report at one time, will also say that no such report exists. “There is no published report,” he will tell Rozen. “If there is a report, we might expect it would have some analysis and conclusions. There is no report, at least not a published report.… I think this stuff is just getting circulated.” [Laura Rozen, 11/3/2005]

Lawrence O’Donnell. [Source: PBS]Progressive author and pundit Lawrence O’Donnell reveals that Time magazine e-mails will prove that White House political strategist Karl Rove was the source for reporter Matthew Cooper’s knowledge that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). O’Donnell reveals his knowledge during the taping of a segment of the syndicated political talk show The McLaughlin Group. The next day, O’Donnell will write, “I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury” investigating the Plame Wilson leak. “Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week.” The next day, Newsweek will print an article revealing Rove as Cooper’s source. [Huffington Post, 7/2/2005]

After the Supreme Court fails to intervene and grant reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller immunity from testifying in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003 and June 27, 2005), Cooper’s publisher, Time magazine, agrees to turn over Cooper’s notes and e-mails regarding his knowlege of Plame Wilson, and his sources. Cooper opposes the decision. Norman Pearlstine, Time’s editor in chief, says: “I believe that there’s no argument for saying ‘no’ once the Supreme Court has ruled on a decision. I think we are a country of laws and not of individuals and that as journalists who regularly point a finger at people who think they’re above the law, I’m not comfortable being one of them myself.… I think it’s a terrible case. I wish the court had taken our appeal, but given that they did not, we’re not above the law and the law was clear that I think we had no choice but to turn over the information.” Miller and the New York Times continue to refuse to comply (see July 6, 2005). [CNN, 6/30/2005; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]

According to lawyer Robert Luskin, White House political strategist Karl Rove did speak to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003) in the days before CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was exposed in the press (see July 14, 2003). Luskin is Rove’s attorney. He says he will “not characteriz[e] the subject matter of that conversation” between Cooper and his client. He adds: “Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn’t disclose Valerie Plame [Wilson]‘s identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else.… Who outed this woman?… It wasn’t Karl.” Rove “certainly did not disclose to Matt Cooper or anybody else any confidential information,” he says. Luskin notes that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has assured him that he and his investigators “have no reason to doubt the honesty of anything [Rove has] said.” [CNN, 7/4/2005] In the days ahead, Cooper will testify that Rove leaked Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA official to him (see July 6, 2005, July 10, 2005, and July 13, 2005).

Judge Thomas Hogan. [Source: Washington City Paper]A federal judge orders New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who continues to refuse to comply with a subpoena in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak case (see December 30, 2003), to go to jail until she or the Times complies. Time magazine and its reporter Matthew Cooper have already agreed to comply with the subpoena, thereby sparing Cooper jail time (see July 1, 2005 and July 6, 2005). [Washington Post, 7/3/2007]Refusal to Reveal Sources - Miller tells Judge Thomas Hogan: “Your Honor, in this case I cannot break my word just to stay out of jail. The right of civil disobedience based on personal conscience is fundamental to our system and honored throughout our history.… The freest and fairest societies are not only those with independent judiciaries, but those with an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know.… If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press.” Her attorney says, “Judy’s view is that any purported waiver she got from anyone (see January 2-5, 2004) was not on the face of it sufficiently broad, clear, and uncoerced.” Hogan, in sharp disagreement, calls Miller’s decision not to testify a possible “obstruction of justice.” [New York Times, 7/6/2005; New York Times, 7/7/2005; Wilson, 2007, pp. 222-223] He seems moved by Miller’s impassioned speech until she invokes her time in Iraq. At that point, according to reporter Marie Brenner, his face darkens. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will later say, “Ms. Miller has great respect for the military who served in Iraq, as we should all do, but if one of those officers’ [lives] was compromised by the leak of classified information, we would want to see that justice was done.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2006] Hogan says Miller can leave the jail any time she likes. “She has the keys to release herself,” he says. “She has a waiver [from her source] she chooses not to recognize” (see January 2-5, 2004 and August 12, 2004 and After). She can “avoid even a minute of separation from her husband if she would do no more than just follow the law like every other citizen in America is required to do.” When Miller’s lawyers ask for home detention and denial of e-mail and cell phone access instead of incarceration, Hogan dryly retorts, referring to Miller’s extensive time spent in Iraq: “Certainly one who can handle the desert in wartime is far better equipped than the average person jailed in a federal facility.… Forced vacation at a comfortable home is not a compelling form of coercion.” [New York Times, 10/16/2005; Wilson, 2007, pp. 222-223] Miller will later tell a colleague: “I was told to put my medications in a Baggie, to understand that I would have no makeup, no personal items except for my pills.” Her lawyers tell her, “You are going in one door of the courthouse and out another.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2006]'Draconian Act' - Times editor Bill Keller calls Miller’s incarceration “a chilling conclusion to an utterly confounding case,” and Fitzgerald’s decision to jail the reporter a “draconian act” that punishes “an honorable journalist” and will “serve future cover-ups of information that happens in the recesses of government and other powerful institutions.” Keller praises Miller’s “determination to honor her professional commitment,” noting that her defiance of the subpoenas “is not an attempt to put herself above the law. The law presented Judy with the choice between betraying a trust to a confidential source or going to jail. The choice she made is a brave and principled choice, and it reflects a valuing of individual conscience that has been part of this country’s tradition since its founding.” [New York Times, 7/7/2005]

Time reporter Matthew Cooper agrees to testify before the grand jury in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003 and July 13, 2005) after the source he has been protecting, White House political adviser Karl Rove, gives him a waiver dissolving their confidentiality agreement. Sources say that Cooper will identify Rove as a person who revealed Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to him. Cooper says he is prepared to remain “in civil contempt,” and ready to go to jail for defying the grand jury subpoenas, “because even though Time magazine had, over my objections, turned over my notes and e-mails to the special counsel under a court order, and even though the prosecutor has all that information now, I wanted—I was prepared to go and remain in civil contempt because I had given a word to my source for two years, which I have kept my word to that source today, for two years. This morning, in what can only be described as a stunning set of developments, that source agreed to give me a specific personal and unambiguous waiver to speak before the grand jury.” [New York Times, 7/7/2005] Cooper has not asked Rove for a waiver before, in part because his lawyer advised against it. Additionally, Time editors were worried about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year. And Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, believed that contacting Cooper would have amounted to interfering with the ongoing court battle between reporter and prosecutor. [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/2005] Cooper adds, “It’s with a bit of surprise and no small amount of relief that I will comply with this subpoena.” Cooper refuses to publicly divulge the source he has been protecting, but a person briefed on the case confirms Cooper’s source as being Rove. [New York Times, 7/7/2005] Cooper did not speak to Rove directly on the issue. The waiver of confidentiality is the product of what the New York Times describes as “a frenzied series of phone calls” between Cooper’s lawyer Richard Sauber, Rove’s lawyer Luskin, and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Cooper views his case as substantially different from that of his New York Times colleague, Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005). Miller has consistently refused to testify, but Cooper has already testified once, describing conversations he had with White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see August 24, 2004). And while the New York Times has consistently supported Miller, Time magazine has been more equivocal, turning over documents to Fitzgerald that identified Rove as Cooper’s source. Cooper’s friend Steven Waldman, a former US News and World Report editor who has talked with Cooper in recent days, says, “The question that was on his mind, and this is my words, is: do you go to jail to protect the confidentiality of a source whose name has been revealed, and not by you but by someone else?” Still, Cooper resisted until he saw an article in the Wall Street Journal that quoted Luskin as saying, “If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it’s not Karl he’s protecting.” That statement prompted a round of telephone discussions between Luskin, Sauber, and Fitzgerald, culminating in Cooper’s decision to testify. “A short time ago,” Cooper tells the court, “in somewhat dramatic fashion, I received an express personal release from my source.” [New York Times, 7/10/2005]

Daily Kos logo as posted on official Twitter account. [Source: Daily Kos via Twitter]Former ambassador Joseph Wilson gives a statement to the liberal blog “Daily Kos” regarding the incarceration of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to testify in the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 6, 2005). Wilson says: “The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability that infects the Bush White House from top to bottom. President Bush’s refusal to enforce his own call for full cooperation with the special counsel [Patrick Fitzgerald] has brought us to this point. Clearly, the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House than coming clean on a serious breach of national security. Thus has Ms. Miller joined my wife, Valerie, and her 20 years of service to this nation as collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to challenge the president on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa. The real victims of this cover-up, which may have turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution, and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly.” Wilson tells Daily Kos blogger Susan Gardner, who posts under the moniker “SusanG,” why he gave the blog his statement instead of following the more traditional path of releasing it to the mainstream media: “In my America, when companies get big and lazy, competion arises. That is what is happening with the blogs. The press… has gotten fat and lazy. The blogs are now driving the stories. It is the American way!” [Susan Gardner, 7/6/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward gives an interview to NPR’s Terry Gross about the so-called “Plamegate” scandal. Woodward is dismissive of the entire imbroglio. “There was no nothing” to the story, he says. When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great.” Woodward does not divulge that he was perhaps the first reporter to have Valerie Plame Wilson’s name leaked to him (see June 13, 2003). Woodward’s dismissive attitude towards the affair is addressed by author and media critic Frank Rich, who writes in 2006: “The Wilsons were nobodies—not players, not part of the tight club to which Woodward and his blue-chip sources belonged. Yet, while Woodward was tone-deaf to the Watergate echoes in the Bush White House’s obsessive secrecy, in its detestation of the press, and in its flouting of the law, the parallels were striking to anyone outside the Beltway.” [American Prospect, 12/18/2005; Rich, 2006, pp. 181-182] In December, American Prospect reporter Todd Gitlin will write that Woodward “publicly and repeatedly sneered” at the Plame Wilson investigation. [American Prospect, 12/18/2005] Woodward says much the same things in private. In a conversation with his friend and former colleague Carl Bernstein around the same time as the NPR interview, he asks: “Why do you keep insisting this is important? I know something about this. There’s nothing there.” Woodward is deeply involved in writing his next book, Plan of Attack, and has little time or patience for what he considers a partisan non-scandal. Additionally, he and Bernstein are frequently together, conducting interviews for their recent book about their Watergate source, W. Mark Felt (see May 31, 2005), and often find themselves in conversations about confidential sources. Bernstein believes Woodward is ignoring something worth watching. “You don’t have this right,” he tells Woodward. “This thing is going to be huge. It will shine a light on the way Bush’s White House operates. It is going to expose the president and his campaign of disinformation.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2006]

White House press secretary Scott McClellan knows that Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff is planning another article detailing what White House official Karl Rove told reporter Matt Cooper (see July 10, 2005). McClellan believes the Isikoff article will reveal that Cooper asked about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, but McClellan has been personally assured by Rove that he told Cooper nothing (see September 16, 2003 and September 27, 2003). President Bush has also assured McClellan that Rove is not the source of the leak (see September 29, 2003). McClellan will later write, “Maybe I did not want to believe that Karl had not been completely forthcoming, or that what he had told me—and the president—was not true.” White House counsel Harriet Miers tells McClellan, “There’s some news that’s likely to come out tomorrow about Karl in the leak investigation that may appear to contradict what you said nearly two years ago” (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003 and July 13, 2005). She warns him not to comment on the investigation. As he will later write, “In effect, she was forbidding me from talking and setting the record straight about my previous comments.” Miers then apologizes and leaves McClellan to mull over the impact of the Rove revelation. He will later disclose the “painful, chilling effect” the revelation has on his “relationships with reporters,” and will reflect: “[I]f some of the highest-ranking officials of the Bush White House hadn’t been forthright with the president’s chief spokesman, how could anyone assume they were honest with the public? The White House had a serious credibility problem, and I was now going to take the heat for it.” He will compare the impact of the Isikoff article to “getting whacked upside the head with a two-by-four. I never saw it coming, given Karl’s personal assurances to me and the president, at least not until the final few days before it became public. And even then I convinced myself not to believe the growing buzz in Washington because of the personal assurances I had received.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 257-260]

Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff reveals that White House political strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper’s source in revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Isikoff learns that Rove was Cooper’s source from Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove has given Cooper permission to testify about their conversations surrounding Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, and anonymously confirms his identity as the source. There is no indication in Cooper’s notes or e-mails to suggest that Rove knew Plame Wilson was a covert operative. However, Isikoff notes, “it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published.” A “source close to Rove” says, “A fair reading of the [Cooper] e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false.” In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write that Luskin’s confirmation is “part of Karl’s and Luskin’s strategy.” Luskin continues to publicly insist that Rove never actually leaked Plame Wilson’s identity. [Newsweek, 7/10/2005; McClellan, 2008, pp. 261] He tells a Washington Post reporter that while Rove mentioned someone he identified as “Wilson’s wife,” he never actually identified her to Cooper by name. Rove also identified Plame Wilson, falsely, as the person who sent Wilson to Niger on behalf of the CIA (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/11/2005]

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, writes a letter to committee chairman Tom Davis (R-VA), asking that the committee open an investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak. Waxman’s letter will not receive a response. Davis has already ignored three similar letters from Waxman (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, and December 11, 2003). [Waxman, 12/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is harshly critical of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see December 30, 2003). The investigation, he says, is “just running like a chain saw right through the lifeline that reporters have to sources who will tell you the truth, what’s really going on.” It is “undermining the core function in journalism.… We better wake up to what’s going on in the seriousness on the assault on the First Amendment that’s taking place right before our eyes.” Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003); he has also withheld his knowledge of the case from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005). [Media Matters, 11/16/2005]

David Gregory. [Source: TopNews (.us)]In light of the revelation that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was a source for a reporter in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 10, 2005), the White House press corps grills press secretary Scott McClellan unmercifully on the entire issue. Plame Wilson will reveal a modicum of sympathy for the beleaguered McClellan, whom she will note “endured what had to be one of his hardest days on the job as reporters competed to ask the next question.” The reporters are eager to pry information out of McClellan and are exasperated at his refusal to answer questions in any depth. Fire Rove? - One of the most probing questions involves the White House’s promise to fire anyone involved in the leak (see September 29, 2003). Asked, “Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?” McClellan responds that the White House is not going to comment on an ongoing investigation, an answer the gathered reporters find less than satisfactory. “Excuse me,” the reporter continues, “but I wasn’t actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak. And I just want to know, is that still his position?” McClellan continues to deflect the question with the standard “refusal to comment on an ongoing investigation” line. He also refuses to answer the direct question, “Did Karl Rove commit a crime?” McClellan Cleared Rove, Others of Culpability - Another reporter, apparently NBC’s David Gregory, asks why McClellan told reporters that Rove, along with National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams and the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were definitely not involved in the leak. “[Y]ou said, ‘I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this’—do you stand by that statement?” McClellan confirms he said that “as part of helping the investigation move forward on the investigation we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.” The reporter calls McClellan’s response “ridiculous,” and says: “The notion that you’re going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?” When McClellan says he will go into further detail “at the appropriate time,” Gregory interjects, “Why are you choosing when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?” McClellan begins, “If you’ll let me finish—” and Gregory cuts him off, saying: “No, you’re not finishing—you’re not saying anything. You stand at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American public, he did, indeed, talk about [Wilson’s] wife, didn’t he?” McClellan continues to refuse to answer. Later in the conference, he is asked if “you will be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved would be let go?” McClellan says he “will be glad to talk about it at that point.” Ordered to Stop Talking? - Another reporter, following up on Gregory’s relentless questioning, asks: “When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?” McClellan answers vaguely, “Back in that time period.” The reporter then notes that “the president commented on it nine months later (see June 10, 2004). So was he not following the White House plan?” Again, McClellan refuses to answer. Another reporter tries a different tack, asking, “Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove?” McClellan answers that “those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigative side while it’s ongoing.” When Did Bush Know? - McClellan is asked bluntly, “When did the president learn that Karl Rove had—” to which McClellan interrupts with, “I’ve responded to that question.” Changing the Subject - McClellan then calls on Raghubar Goyal of the India Times, who he is sure will ask a foreign policy question having nothing to do with Rove or Plame Wilson. He manages to keep the subject more or less off of Rove for the remainder of the conference. Plame Wilson will recall, “I almost felt sorry for McClellan, who was perspiring and had that deer-in-the-headlights look to him.” [White House, 7/11/2005; Wilson, 2007, pp. 223-227]Change in Media Focus - After this press conference, as Plame Wilson will note, the press begins issuing far more skeptical reports on the leak and its investigation, depending less on White House spin about the Wilsons’ supposed culpability and zeroing in on the roles of Rove, Libby, and other White House officials. Plame Wilson will recall that for the first time, the pressure was easing off of them and being refocused onto the White House. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 227-228]McClellan: Press Conference 'Brutal,' 'Humiliating' - McClellan will later characterize the press conference as “brutal.” He calls NBC’s Gregory “mocking” when Gregory asks whether he still stands by his old assertions of no involvement by Rove (see September 29, 2003), Lewis Libby (see October 4, 2003), and Elliott Abrams (see October 5, 2003). ABC’s Terry Moran is incredulous that McClellan would try to hide behind a refusal to “comment on an ongoing investigation.” McClellan will later write, “Eventually, long after leaving the White House, I came to see that standing in front of the speeding press bus in those days had much more to do with protecting the president and the White House from further political embarrassment than respecting the sanctity of the investigation.” McClellan will reflect that it was during this press conference, as he felt his “reputation crumbling away, bit by bit,” that he began to lose his “affection for the job.” He will write: “The ridicule I received that day and the following ones, though dispiriting and humiliating, was justified, given what I had previously said. Since my hands were tied (see July 10, 2005), about all I could do was go into a defensive crouch.” After the conference, McClellan receives a brief verbal apology from Rove. McClellan will write, “It’s clear to me, Karl was only concerned about protecting himself from possible legal action and preventing his many critics from bringing him down.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 260-261]

The press learns that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson almost two years ago (see July 14, 2003), has been cooperating with the Plame Wilson leak investigation headed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. The news of Novak’s cooperation comes from attorneys familiar with his testimony. Novak’s lawyer, James Hamilton, refuses to comment. Novak, according to the sources, said that his Bush administration sources (see July 7, 2003, July 8, 2003, and July 8 or 9, 2003) did not identify Plame Wilson as a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996). His use of the word “operative” to describe Plame Wilson in his column was his own formulation, he has said, and not the words of his sources. The lawyer for White House political strategist Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, has told reporters that Rove never told Novak or other reporters that Plame Wilson was a covert operative. Reporter Murray Waas writes: “Federal investigators have been skeptical of Novak’s assertions that he referred to Plame as a CIA ‘operative’ due to his own error, instead of having been explicitly told that was the case by his sources, according to attorneys familiar with the criminal probe. That skepticism has been one of several reasons that the special prosecutor has pressed so hard for the testimony of Time magazine’s [Matthew] Cooper (see July 13, 2005) and New York Times reporter Judith Miller” (see September 30, 2005). Investigators are also interested in telephone conversations between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days after the press reported the FBI was opening an investigation into the Plame Wilson leak (see September 29, 2003 and October and November 2003). And, in other testimony, a US government official told investigators that Novak asked him specifically if Plame Wilson had some covert status with the CIA. It is unclear who that official is or when he talked to investigators. [Murray Waas, 7/12/2005]

Time reporter Matthew Cooper testifies before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003 and July 1, 2005). [Washington Post, 7/3/2007] “I testified openly and honestly,” Cooper says after the session. “I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That is something the special counsel is going to have to determine.” [New York Times, 7/14/2005] Four days later, Cooper will write of his testimony for Time, though special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told him he would rather Cooper remained silent. Cooper is under no legal obligation not to divulge his grand jury testimony. He will say that while grand juries are famously passive, ready to “indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them,” this one is unusually active. About a third of the questions he answers are from jurors, not prosecutors. Cooper testifies that in the week after Joseph Wilson’s now-famous op-ed disclosing the fraudulence of the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see July 6, 2003), the administration had done something it rarely does: admit a mistake. It was admitting that it had erred in using that claim to advance its arguments for war with Iraq (see July 8, 2003). That was big news, and Cooper, having been at Time less than a month, was aggressively covering it. He was curious about the White House’s apparent efforts to smear Wilson, and called White House political adviser Karl Rove on July 11 to discuss the apparent smear campaign (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). The jury is interested, and apparently amused, at Cooper’s choice of words regarding the status of his conversation with Rove: “double super secret background.” Cooper concludes, “So did Rove leak Plame’s name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘WMD’? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don’t know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me. At this point, I’m as curious as anyone else to see what Patrick Fitzgerald has.” [Time, 7/17/2005]

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) calls upon the White House to strip political adviser Karl Rove of his security clearance, referring to Rove’s involvement in leaking the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 10, 2005). Reid says that the administration should have done so long ago, but instead has refused to discuss Rove’s involvement and attacked its critics. “This is what is known as a cover-up,” Reid says. “This is an abuse of power.” In response, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) accuses Democrats of resorting to “partisan war chants.” [Associated Press, 7/15/2005] Shortly after Reid’s statement, the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Rove has, apparently, violated the strictures of the federal government’s Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 312), and that those strictures call for the removal of Rove’s security clearance. The organization goes on to note that with few exceptions, the mainstream media has repeated Democratic calls for Rove to lose his clearance without mentioning Rove’s violation of the Nondisclosure Agreement. According to the Agreement, “dissemination” or “confirmation” of classified information constitutes an “unauthorized disclosure,” even after that information has been published in a “public source.” [Media Matters, 7/19/2005] In October, Rove will admit to having leaked Plame Wilson’s name to two reporters (see October 14, 2005).

President Bush says he is withholding judgment on whether senior political adviser Karl Rove was one of the administration officials who leaked the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. Rove has been identified in court testimony as having disclosed Plame Wilson’s identity to two separate journalists, Robert Novak (see July 14, 2005) and Matthew Cooper (see July 6, 2005). Bush has said repeatedly that anyone identified as leaking Plame Wilson’s identity would be fired (see September 29, 2003 and June 10, 2004). He now says it would be wrong for him to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. “I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation,” he says. “I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports.” Bush makes these statements with Rove literally sitting at his elbow. Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin indicates that Rove already told the grand jury of his conversation with Cooper (see July 17, 2003). “Rove has cooperated completely with the special prosecutor, and he has been repeatedly assured he is not a target of the investigation,” Luskin says. “Rove has done nothing wrong. We’re confident that he will not become a target after the special prosecutor has reviewed all evidence.” Rove’s supporters inside and outside the administration emphasize that Rove never told the reporter Plame Wilson’s actual name, nor mentioned her undercover status, but merely told Cooper that “Joseph Wilson’s wife” worked at the CIA. Critics note that it would take anyone a matter of moments to identify Plame Wilson as Wilson’s wife. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have asked Bush to revoke Rove’s security clearance. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) says the issue of whether Rove actually broke the law is not the only issue. “We just don’t hold those working at the closest and highest levels to the president to a criminal standard and say, ‘If you have not committed a crime, show up for work tomorrow morning,’” he says. [New York Times, 7/14/2005] Days later, Bush will modify his earlier statements, saying that someone who has committed a crime would no longer work in his administration (see July 18, 2005).

Some of the 91 signatures on the letter from House Democrats to the president. [Source: House Judiciary Committee / Raw Story]Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and 91 other House members send a letter to President Bush asking that White House political adviser Karl Rove either explain his role in outing CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, or resign. Conyers and the co-signers write, “[W]e believe it is not tenable to maintain Mr. Rove as one of your most important advisers unless he is willing to explain his central role in using the power and authority of your administration to disseminate information regarding Ms. Plame [Wilson] and to undermine her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) do not sign the letter, but send their own letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asking that relevant House committees schedule hearings on the Plame Wilson matter. In their letter, Pelosi and Hoyer write: “We urge you to direct that committees with jurisdiction over the Plame matter schedule hearings immediately. In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was underway did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters” (see July 29, 2005). [Raw Story, 7/15/2005]

A source from within the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation confirms that White House political adviser Karl Rove had spoken with conservative columnist Robert Novak before Novak published his column identifying Plame Wilson as a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003 and July 14, 2003). Rove discussed Plame Wilson with Novak. However, according to the source, Rove first heard about Plame Wilson from Novak, as well as learning from Novak that she had played a role in recommending her husband, Joseph Wilson, for a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003). According to the source, Novak, not Rove, initiated the conversation about Plame Wilson. It is not clear who revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Novak, or whether Novak has identified that source to the grand jury. [New York Times, 7/15/2005; New York Times, 7/16/2005] In its reporting, the New York Times publicly reveals the July 8, 2003 conversation between Rove and Novak (see July 8, 2003). [New York Times, 7/15/2005] Novak has disputed Rove’s version of events, saying that Rove confirmed Plame Wilson’s identity to him and not the other way around (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004).

Rep. James Sensenbrenner. [Source: Climate Progress (.org)]Representative John Conyers (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, writes a letter to committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (D-WI), asking that the committee open an investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak. Conyers’s letter will not receive a response. Sensenbrenner has already ignored one such request (see October 30, 2003). [Waxman, 12/2005]

One day after the New York Times revealed that Karl Rove was a source for the 2003 outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2005), unnamed sources tell the New York Daily News that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is also examining the role of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in the leak. “Ari’s name keeps popping up,” one of the sources tells the Daily News. The press is not yet aware that Fleischer is, indeed, one of the White House officials who leaked Plame Wilson’s identity (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003), nor is it aware that Fitzgerald has offered Fleischer immunity in return for his testimony in his investigation (see February 13, 2004, June 10, 2004, and September 2004). Sources also note that Fitzgerald is focusing on Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby, whom one source describes as “totally obsessed with [Joseph] Wilson,” the husband of Plame Wilson who angered the administration by publishing an op-ed debunking a key claim President Bush used to justify his decision to invade Iraq (see July 6, 2003). And, the sources say, Fitzgerald is keenly interested in a State Department memo revealing Plame Wilson’s identity (see June 10, 2003 and (July 15, 2005)). [New York Daily News, 7/15/2005] Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler, covering the Libby perjury trial in 2007, will write of her suspicions that the information to the Daily News was leaked by Rove, or someone close to him, to attempt to turn media attention away from himself and onto someone else. “Clearly, the behind-the-scenes media campaign was giving reporters fresh meat (in the form of Fleischer) to distract them from Rove,” Wheeler will write. Wheeler will note that while the media remains interested in Rove, the apparent distraction attempt will work, with media attention focusing on Fleischer and how the memo may incriminate him in the investigation. She will write, “The press, which just a day before had been in a frenzy reporting Rove’s demonstrable role in the CIA leak, had abruptly shifted its attention to chasing down a story implicating Fleischer and (to a lesser degree) [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell in unsubstantiated ways.” Wheeler goes on to observe: “The leak campaign against Fleischer served one other purpose, albeit a crafty one. Since Libby had told Fleischer of Valerie [Plame] Wilson’s identity in such a way that made it appear that Libby knew her identity was classified, Fleischer was a potential witness against Libby. Focusing suspicion on Fleischer would undermine his role as a witness if Libby were to face charges. The leaks about Fleischer and the [State Department] memo served several purposes: They distracted the press corps from validated revelations of Rove’s involvement; they provided an alternative source for the Novak leak and a provenance for that leak outside the White House; and they impugned a potential witness at a trial. All of this was possible because some journalists didn’t question what they were being fed by their unnamed sources.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/4/2007]

Prosecutors in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak case (see December 30, 2003) become intensely interested in a 2003 State Department memo (see June 10, 2003) detailing how former ambassador Joseph Wilson—Plame Wilson’s husband—was chosen to journey to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The memo also sheds light on the role Wilson’s wife played in his selection. Prosecutors are trying to learn whether White House officials learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from the memo, if any officials then leaked her name to the press, and if those officials were truthful in their testimony about the memo. It is possible that the memo could show that the State Department told the White House of Plame Wilson’s identity as an undercover CIA agent before July 6, 2003, when Wilson publicly lambasted the Bush administration’s justification for war with Iraq in a New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003). It is as yet unclear who actually saw the memo, or whether it was the original source of information for whoever gave Plame Wilson’s name to conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003). Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer is also a person of interest in the investigation. Prosecutors want to know how much detailed information he had about the State Department memo. [New York Times, 7/16/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward criticizes the investigation into the identity leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003); he has also withheld his knowledge of the case from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005). Woodward tells a CNN audience: “I’m not sure there’s any crime in all of this. The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail. People had pled guilty. In other words, there was a solid evidentiary trail. I don’t see it here.… Well, it may just be politics as usual. I mean, [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove’s defenders say, look, the evidence is, and the evidence is, that he was saying Joe Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband], who was criticizing the administration on weapons of mass destruction really had an ax to grind and got his job because his wife had worked at the CIA and recommended him, so there’s fuzziness to this.” [Media Matters, 11/16/2005]

During a press conference, President Bush is asked if he still intends to fire anyone involved in the Plame Wilson leak, and if he is “displeased that Karl Rove told a reporter that Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife worked for the [CIA] on WMD issues.” Bush, described as looking “mildly annoyed,” responds, “We have a serious ongoing investigation here,” and adds: “[I]t’s being played out in the press. And I think it’s best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well. I don’t know all the facts. I would like to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who’s spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know all the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.” The last line regarding a “crime” was carefully selected before the conference by White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who, press secretary Scott McClellan will later write, wanted to “redefine the terms of firing someone who might have been involved in the leak, specifically Karl.” The New York Times observes, “The remarks appeared to shift the standard for dismissal that has been expressed repeatedly over many months by Mr. Bush’s spokesmen—from promises to fire anyone who played a role in the disclosure, to Mr. Bush’s statement today that criminal conduct would have to be involved.” McClellan dutifully echoes the new phrase in his own press conference, “barely objecting that it did not square with what the president had previously committed to do” (see September 29, 2003 and June 10, 2004). “I think that the president was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration: that if someone commits a crime, they’re not going to be working any longer in this administration,” McClellan tells reporters. “I think that you should not read anything into it more than what the president said at this point.” McClellan will later describe himself as “psychologically battered” by this point (see July 11, 2005). [New York Times, 7/18/2005; White House, 7/18/2005; New York Times, 7/19/2005; McClellan, 2008, pp. 262-263]Accusations of Shifting Standards, 'Lowering the Ethics Bar' - Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says he is disappointed in what he believes to be Bush’s shifting stance. “The standard for holding a high position in the White House should not simply be that you didn’t break the law,” he says. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) writes a letter to Bush charging that he has “significantly changed” his position, and that a president has “an affirmative obligation” to take quick action to protect national security secrets without waiting for a prosecution to run its course. [New York Times, 7/18/2005] Other Democrats charge that Bush has “lowered the ethics bar” for his administration. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) says: “It appears that an administration that came to office promising ‘honesty and integrity’ and to avoid ‘legalisms’ is now defining ethical standards downward. In this White House, apparently no aide will be fired or forced to resign unless and until the jail cell door is locked behind him.” [Associated Press, 7/18/2005]Rove Held to Different Standard of Accountability, Say Experts - Some experts say that by insisting on waiting for a final legal verdict, Bush is setting a different standard of accountability for Rove than for other government employees. Elaine Kaplan, who headed the Office of Special Counsel from 1998 through 2003, says: “Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don’t have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That’s not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime.” Beth Slavet, the former chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, adds: “The government can fire a Civil Service employee if it can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that it would ‘promote the efficiency of the service’ to do so. The person does not have to be guilty of a crime. You can be dismissed because you didn’t submit paperwork on time, you didn’t follow instructions, you repeatedly showed up late for work, or you yelled at supervisors and fellow workers.” [New York Times, 7/19/2005]

Former State Department official Marc Grossman, who has testified that he is one of the officials who divulged former CIA covert official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to former White House aide Lewis Libby (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), tells reporters that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger (see March 4-5, 2002) had nothing to do with Plame Wilson being Wilson’s wife, as many of Libby’s defenders assert. Grossman wrote a memo detailing Wilson’s trip to Niger (see June 10, 2003) that was given to Libby and other White House officials. Grossman, speaking anonymously, says: “It wasn’t a Wilson-Wilson wife memo. It was a memo on uranium in Niger and focused principally on our [the State Department’s] disagreement” with the White House. The memo noted, erroneously, that Plame Wilson helped engineer Wilson’s trip to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003), but Grossman says it did not identify her as an undercover CIA agent, nor did it identify her as Valerie Plame, which was her maiden name and cover name at the CIA. Grossman says the fact that the CIA official and Wilson were a married couple was largely an incidental reference. [Associated Press, 7/20/2005] Grossman will be revealed as the anonymous source who speaks to reporters at this time in April 2006. [Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006]

MSNBC reports that the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak has heard testimony from UN Ambassador John Bolton about a State Department memo identifying Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official (see May 29, 2003 and June 10, 2003). The date of Bolton’s appearance before the grand jury is unclear. At the time of the memo, Bolton was an undersecretary in the State Department. [MSNBC, 7/21/2005] Bolton failed to mention his grand jury appearance, or his involvement in the Plame Wilson leak, during Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination as UN ambassador. [New York Times, 7/22/2005] State Department spokesman Sean McCormack will deny that Bolton testified before the grand jury. [Newsmax, 7/28/2005] A day later, the State Department will acknowledge that Bolton was interviewed over his role in the administration’s Iraq-Niger uranium claims, another fact he omitted during his nomination hearings, but will not admit to his appearance before the grand jury. [Associated Press, 7/29/2005]

Bloomberg News reports that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, testified that he first learned of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert. Libby will make this claim a staple of his defense in his upcoming perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007). He is referring to a conversation he had with Russert in July 2003 (see July 10 or 11, 2003). He testified to the claim when he was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Russert has told FBI investigators that he did not tell Libby of Plame Wilson’s identity (see November 24, 2003 and August 7, 2004). Similarly, White House political strategist Karl Rove has testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from columnist Robert Novak (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, and October 15, 2004). Novak has told investigators that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Rove, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Fitzgerald has determined that both Libby and Rove may have deliberately lied to the FBI and to his investigations in making their claims (see October and November 2003). According to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, Rove told Fitzgerald’s grand jury that “he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak.” Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says that the White House should suspend Libby and Rove’s security clearances (see July 13, 2005), and that President Bush should fire anyone involved in the leak, presumably meaning Libby and Rove. [Bloomberg, 7/22/2005; Washington Post, 7/23/2005]

Arianna Huffington. [Source: Boston Globe]Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington slams the perception that New York Times reporter Judith Miller is, in Huffington’s words, “a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity” by going to jail to protect her White House sources in the Plame Wilson leak investigation (see July 6, 2005). Huffington speculates that Miller is herself the source she is trying to protect. It was Miller, Huffington theorizes, who found out from “her friends in the intelligence community” that Plame Wilson was a covert CIA agent, and subsequently told White House official Lewis Libby of Plame Wilson’s CIA status. Miller’s motivation was to protect her own rapidly deteriorating reputation as a purveyor of manipulated and deceptive information to promote the Iraq invasion (see July 6, 2003 and July 25, 2003). “Maybe Miller tells [White House official Karl] Rove too—or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell [reporters Robert] Novak and [Matthew] Cooper. The story gets out. This is why Miller doesn’t want to reveal her ‘source’ at the White House—because she was the source.… This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn’t to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson’s motives. Which Novak did” (see July 14, 2003). [Huffington Post, 7/27/2005] When Miller learns of Huffington’s article, via her lawyer Saul Pilchen, she is horrified. Pilchen, himself taken aback by Huffington’s vociferous and unsourced assertions (which Huffington called “a scenario” and not established fact), will later tell reporter Marie Brennan: “It was my first experience with the blog culture. It was astounding to me how little constraint the bloggers had. They were passing off speculation as fact, and it read to me like pure character assassination.” Miller considers the Huffington piece certainly mistaken, and possibly libelous. But, as Brennan will later observe, the discussion and debate generated by Huffington and many others in the “blogosphere” make it difficult for fellow journalists to defend Miller. Reporter Lowell Bergman, a Miller defender, will later tell Brennan that it quickly became clear that Huffington’s idea of Miller being part of a White House conspiracy “was a fantasy fed by the deep animosity of people toward Judy.… It was a surrogate for what they all wanted to do to the Bush administration.” [Huffington Post, 7/27/2005; Vanity Fair, 4/2006]

Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduces a resolution that would request the Bush administration to divulge the name, or names, of the White House officials responsible for leaking the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003). The resolutions are referred to four House committees: Judiciary, International Relations, Armed Services, and Intelligence. The Republican leadership votes the resolution down in each committee, arguing in each case that to make such a request would interfere with the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation. In December 2005, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee will write, “This argument would seem to be disingenuous given that there are numerous precedents for Congressional committees investigating concurrently with the Justice Department and with other matters under criminal review by the executive branch, most notably many concurrent investigations by the Republican Congress involving the Clinton administration.” [Waxman, 12/2005]

Susan Ralston and Israel Hernandez, two aides to White House political strategist Karl Rove, testify before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak. Ralston still works for Rove, while Hernandez has moved to the Commerce Department. Both are asked about the testimony given by reporter Matthew Cooper (see July 13, 2005), who told the grand jury of the conversation he had with Rove concerning Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Both aides are asked why Cooper’s call was not entered in Rove’s office telephone logs; Ralston says that the call was not logged because Cooper did not call Rove directly, but was transferred from the White House switchboard. [New York Times, 8/3/2005; Washington Post, 10/7/2005]

CIA official Robert Grenier, who in 2003 was the agency’s Iraq mission manager and who informed former White House official Lewis Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA official (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), testifies about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson identity leak to the grand jury investigating it. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007] Grenier has already testified to the FBI about his conversation with Libby (see December 10, 2003).

Members of the special counsel’s investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak learn that former White House official Lewis Libby and/or his attorney, Joseph Tate, may have tried to influence or discourage New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s testimony. Miller received information from Libby about Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his staff learn from press accounts of possible witness tampering by either Libby, Tate, or both. It is known that Tate has discouraged Libby from giving Miller a waiver of confidentiality that would free her from her responsibility of protecting Libby as a source. Miller is currently in jail for refusing to testify in the investigation (see July 6, 2005). Upon learning about the potential tampering, Fitzgerald strongly urges attorneys for Miller and Libby to negotiate an agreement that would allow Miller to testify. (Libby will give Miller a waiver releasing her from their confidentiality agreement—see September 15, 2005). According to investigative reporter Murray Waas, because Fitzgerald is loathe to lose Miller’s testimony, and is unsure of what she might testify to, he will not aggressively pursue the possibility that Libby and/or Tate might have attempted to influence or discourage Miller’s testimony (see August 12, 2004 and After). However, the possibility of witness tampering does give further impetus to Fitzgerald’s inclination to bring criminal charges against Libby. Waas will write, “Potentially misleading and incomplete answers by Libby to federal investigators are less likely to be explained away as the result of his faulty memory or inadvertent mistakes,” according to his sources. A Justice Department official will tell Waas: “Both intent and frame of mind are often essential to bringing the type of charges Fitzgerald is apparently considering. And not wanting a key witness to testify goes straight to showing that there were indeed bad intentions.” [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

James Carville and Robert Novak, moments before Novak leaves the CNN set. [Source: CNN / Comedy Central]Conservative columnist Robert Novak storms off the set of CNN’s Strategy Session, apparently unwilling to discuss his outing of CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Novak, discussing an unrelated matter with Democratic strategist James Carville, says, “Just let me finish what I’m going to say, James, please. I know you hate to hear me.” Carville says to host Ed Henry: “He’s gotta show these right-wingers that he’s got backbone, you know. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show ‘em you’re tough.” Novak stands up, saying, “Well, I think that’s bullsh_t, and I hate that.” He says to Henry, “Just let it go.” Novak then walks off the set. Later in the broadcast, Henry apologizes to viewers, saying: “I had told him in advance that we were going to ask him about the CIA leak case. He was not here for me to be able to ask him about that. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ask him about that in the future.” [Media Matters, 8/4/2005]

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, tells federal investigators that he disclosed CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). Reporter Murray Waas will write, “The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald’s grand jury probe.” Many involved in the investigation question Libby’s apparent decision not to give a personal waiver of privilege to Miller, who is currently sitting in jail rather than disclosing the contents of her conversations with Libby (see July 6, 2005). Miller does not accept the validity of a general waiver signed by Libby and others at the behest of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and his prosecutors consider the meetings between Libby and Miller critical to proving that Libby committed criminal offenses by giving information on Plame Wilson’s CIA status to Miller and other reporters. [American Prospect, 8/6/2005]

Former Clinton administration political consultant James Carville predicts that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will “com[e] after more people at the New York Times” in addition to Times reporter Judith Miller, who is in jail for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 6, 2005). Carville tells radio host Don Imus: “My sense is he’s coming after more people at the New York Times. He’s going to subpoena [executive editor] Bill Keller and all of them and ask them what Judy Miller told them. And if they don’t talk, he’s going to stick them in jail.” Carville also says that many people he talks to believe that Miller was used by the White House to “disseminate” Plame Wilson’s identity. “There are all sorts of rumors and I hear second hand that [Miller] was screaming out in the news room about this,” he says. The Times, Carville says, “to some extent is going to have to come clean. Because they’re going to have to tell us what Judy Miller knew, when she knew it, and who she told. And there’s a lot of people at the Times—and I know this to be a fact—who believe that.” Carville says it is difficult for Miller to claim First Amendment protections in refusing to discuss her knowledge of Plame Wilson’s identity leak. “It’s going to be very interesting to see whether [Miller’s] problem is a First Amendment [problem]—i.e., I want to protect a source—or a Fifth Amendment [problem]—I was out spreading this stuff too.” [NewsMax, 8/8/2005]

Deputy Attorney General James Comey delegates to Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis all authority to deal with the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak. Comey writes to Margolis: “I delegate to you all of my authority as acting attorney general with respect to that investigation and Mr. Fitzgerald’s service as special counsel, as delineated in [earlier] correspondence [between Comey and Fitzgerald]. This delegation to you in no way retracts or modifies the scope of the prior delegations of authority to Mr. Fitzgerald.” [Office of the Deputy Attorney General, 8/12/2005 ]

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald writes a letter to Joseph Tate, one of the lawyers representing White House aide Lewis Libby. Fitzgerald wants to clarify any potential misunderstandings regarding Libby’s possible release of reporter Judith Miller from their understanding of confidentiality. Miller is currently serving an indefinite jail sentence over her refusal to testify before Fitzgerald’s grand jury about her conversations with Libby (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald cites media accounts that indicate there may be misunderstanding between the parties; he affirms that any communication from Libby to Miller granting Miller a confidentiality waiver would be voluntary, and would not be construed as obstruction. [Office of Special Counsel, 9/12/2005 ] Three days later, Libby releases Miller from her confidentiality pledge (see September 15, 2005).

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, writes jailed reporter Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005) a chatty two-page letter that asserts he had wanted her to testify about their conversations all along. Miller is jailed pending her reversal of a decision not to reveal Libby as a confidential source; Libby had told Miller that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Libby’s letter comes after rounds of intensive negotiations between his lawyers, Miller’s lawyer Robert Bennett, and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Libby says that he is glad to grant Miller a waiver of confidentiality which will allow her to testify about their conversations (see September 12, 2005), and says that a year earlier his lawyer had assured her lawyer that he had then waived confidentiality (see January 2-5, 2004). He reassures her that his decision to waive confidentiality is completely voluntary, and says he will actually be “better off” if she testifies. In conclusion, Libby writes: “You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life.” [Libby, 9/15/2005 ; New York Times, 9/29/2005] Miller will deny any hidden meaning in Libby’s last few lines, and deny to Fitzgerald that Libby attempted to “shape” her testimony in any way through the letter. [New York Times, 10/16/2005] Bennett will say he does not believe that Libby was trying to influence Miller’s testimony, but knew as soon as he read his letter that it would “be trouble” for her. “I know that the letter bothered [Judy] and it bothered me,” Bennett says. “She might be soon testifying, and a prosecutor might construe that as an attempt to influence her testimony. It was more probably just sort of a dumb thing to put in a letter.” Bennett will add: “I think it is important that Judy was protecting a source in terms of source confidentiality and the journalistic privilege. She was not protecting a source to prevent someone from going to jail. The letter just didn’t help matters.” [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is released from jail after agreeing to comply with a subpoena from the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 6, 2005). According to Miller, the person who told her of Plame Wilson’s covert identity, former vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, “voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality” (see September 15, 2005 and October 28, 2005). [Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Libby’s lawyer Joseph Tate says that his client released Miller from her confidentiality agreement over a year ago, and that he was surprised to learn that Miller and her lawyer, Robert Bennett, did not know that she was free to testify. “We told her lawyers it [Libby’s original waiver] was not coerced,” Tate says. “We are surprised to learn we had anything to do with her incarceration” (see September 12, 2005). [Washington Post, 9/30/2009] Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger says: “Judy has been unwavering in her commitment to protect the confidentiality of her source. We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify.” Miller adds: “I went to jail to preserve the time-honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. I chose to take the consequences—85 days in prison—rather than violate that promise. The principle was more important to uphold than my personal freedom.” [New York Times, 9/29/2005] In preparation for her upcoming testimony (see September 30, 2005), Sulzberger and Times executive editor Bill Keller take Miller from jail to have a massage, a manicure, a martini, and a steak dinner before she goes home to sleep in her own bed. [New York Times, 10/16/2005]

A day before New York Times reporter Judith Miller is scheduled to testify before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 30, 2005), Miller’s attorney, Floyd Abrams, writes a letter to Lewis Libby’s attorney, Joseph Tate, alleging that Tate had repeatedly made comments to him that may have been intended to discourage Miller from testifying. Miller is expected to provide testimony that will contradict Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has testified that he never provided Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA agent to Miller (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Miller was concerned that Libby would not provide her with a specific waiver of confidentiality, without which she was unwilling to testify. Libby had signed a general waiver provided by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but Miller did not consider that as enough of a release from her obligation to protect him, her source. Miller has said that she spent 85 days in jail (see July 6, 2005) because Tate told her that the general waiver was not given freely. Libby provided her with a specific waiver two weeks ago (see September 15, 2005). Abrams writes that Tate told him that the general waiver was “by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby’s continued employment at the White House.” Abrams writes in part: “In our [various] conversations… you did not say that Mr. Libby’s waiver was uncoerced. In fact, you said quite the opposite. You told me that the signed waiver was by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby’s continued employment at the White House. You compared the coercion to that inherent in the effective bar imposed upon the White House employees asserting the Fifth Amendment. A failure by your client to sign the written waiver, you explained, like any assertion of your client of the Fifth Amendment, would result in his dismissal. You persuasively mocked the notion that any waiver signed under such circumstances could be deemed voluntary.” Tate says that Abrams’s claims are “outrageous” and “factually incorrect,” and that neither he nor Libby has said or done anything to discourage Miller from testifying or to influence any testimony she might give. Abrams says that Tate provided him with some information from Libby’s previous testimony to the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), and attempted to find out from him what Miller might testify to. He says he refused to provide Tate with any such information. Miller has also written that Tate expressely asked her not to “go there” when she refused to say that her testimony would exonerate Libby, but other sources have said Tate did not say anything of that nature to her. [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

The Washington Post publishes an article, written by Susan Schmidt and Jim VanderHei, that reveals details of White House official Lewis Libby’s conversations with New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Miller has just been released from jail (see September 29, 2005) after receiving a confidentiality waiver from Libby (see September 15, 2005). The details of the Libby-Miller conversations come from a source the reporters call “familiar with Libby’s account of his conversations with Miller in July 2003.” According to the source, Libby told Miller he heard that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, “had something to do with sending him” to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), “but he did not know who she was or where she worked, the source said.” The reporters then write that during his second conversation with Miller, Libby said he had learned that Plame Wilson “had a role in sending him on the trip and that she worked for the CIA. Libby never knew Plame’s name or that she was a covert operative, the source said.” The source also told the reporters that Libby never spoke with columnist Robert Novak about Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). [Washington Post, 9/30/2009] The source “familiar with Libby’s” testimony was repeating the same falsehoods that Libby told the Plame Wilson grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Miller will testify that in their first conversation, Libby told her that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA’s Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office (see September 30, 2005, October 7, 2005, and October 12, 2005). [National Journal, 10/18/2005] Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler will later write that she believes Libby used the Post story to attempt to “coach” Miller’s testimony. Both Wheeler and reporter Murray Waas will note that the same anonymous source quoted in the Schmidt/VandeHei story attempted, and failed, to get articles based on the same information published in two other newspapers. Waas will write: “Journalists at two news organizations declined to publish stories. Among their concerns was that they had only a single source for the story and that that source had such a strong bias on behalf of Libby that the account of his grand jury testimony might possibly be incomplete or misleading in some way. But more important were concerns that a leak of an account of Libby’s grand jury testimony, on the eve of Miller’s own testimony, might be an effort—using the media—to let Miller know what Libby had said, if she wanted to give testimony beneficial to him, or similar to his. (There is no evidence that Miller did not testify truthfully to the grand jury.)” Wheeler accuses Schmidt of being Libby’s “stenographer,” a reporter all too willing to publish whatever a person wishes without investigating the possible motives behind the provision of the information. Wheeler also believes Libby may have attempted to coach or influence Miller’s testimony in his letter releasing the reporter from their confidentiality agreement (see September 15, 2005). [National Journal, 10/18/2005; Marcy Wheeler, 11/3/2005] The Schmidt/VandeHei article is dated September 30, but appears on the Post’s Web site on September 29, well before Miller’s testimony. [National Journal, 10/18/2005]

Judith Miller speaks to reporters outside the courtroom. [Source: Luke Frazza / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images]New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who yesterday was released from jail after agreeing to testify before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 29, 2005), testifies before that jury. [Washington Post, 7/3/2007] In some respects Miller’s testimony is less than enlightening. She admits that Lewis Libby was the source that she was protecting (see September 15, 2005), but says that she doesn’t believe Libby told her Plame Wilson’s name. In the same notebook Miller used to take notes from her conversations with Libby (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), Miller wrote “Valerie Flame,” an apparent misspelling. Asked why that name appears in the notebook alongside the notes from her conversations with Libby, Miller equivocates, saying she doesn’t believe she heard the name from Libby. She will later write of her testimony, “I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.” As a side note, the Times only now reveals Libby as Miller’s source, though other news outlets have already identified Libby. [New York Times, 10/16/2005] Miller testifies that she does not recall her first meeting with Libby, which took place June 23. She will change her testimony (see October 7, 2005 and October 12, 2005) after prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald shows her Secret Service logs showing that she had met with Libby in the Executive Office Building. [National Journal, 10/20/2005] This memory lapse is consistent with theories that Miller may be attempting to protect Libby by failing to testify about that first meeting, where Libby informed Miller that Plame Wilson was a CIA official working in the Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office (see September 29-30, 2005). Miller also testifies that Libby saw the media’s reporting of the Iraq-Niger story as the product of “selective leaking” by the CIA. The purpose of the CIA leaks, Miller says Libby believed, was to protect the agency if no WMD were found in Iraq. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 151]

During a roundtable discussion on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos says, “[A] source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions” about disclosing CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to reporters (see July 14, 2003). [Think Progress, 8/2/2005]

New York Times reporter Judith Miller turns over additional notes to the prosecutors in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak case. The notes indicate that she met with Lewis “Scooter” Libby on June 23, 2003 (see June 23, 2003) and discussed Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson. Until these notes are revealed, Miller had testified that she had not met with Libby until almost two weeks later (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [New York Times, 10/8/2005] Miller will later say that she discovered the notes in the Times newsroom after her first testimony (see October 12, 2005). [New York Times, 10/12/2005] It was during the June 23 meeting that Libby told Miller of Plame Wilson’s position in the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) office. Miller’s memory is also jogged when special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald shows her Secret Service logs showing that she met with Libby on June 23 in the White House Executive Office Building. Only after seeing the logs does Miller search her notes and find the information about her first meeting with Libby. Miller’s lawyer, Robert Bennett, says: “We went back on the second occasion to provide those additional notes that were found, and correct the grand jury testimony reflecting on the June 23 meeting.” He says Miller’s testimony is now “correct, complete, and accurate.” Washington defense attorney Stan Brand says that even if Fitzgerald believes Miller deliberately feigned a memory lapse about that first meeting with Libby, he is unlikely to “make an issue out of this because he got what he wanted from her,” and might still be dependant upon her as a witness during a potential trial. [National Journal, 10/20/2005]

New York Times reporter Judith Miller testifies for a second time to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak. In light of this and her earlier testimony (see September 30, 2005), federal judge Thomas Hogan lifts the contempt order he had previously issued (see October 7, 2004). Miller testifies about her notes on her discussions with Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney (October 7, 2005). She testifies that she most likely met with Libby on June 23, 2003 (see June 23, 2003) only after prosecutors show her Secret Service logs that indicate she met with him in the Executive Office Building. She had failed to testify about that meeting in her previous testimony, and, when pressed by prosecutors, insisted that she could not remember that specific meeting. Miller’s lawyer, Robert Bennett, tells a reporter that today’s testimony “corrected” her earlier statements to the grand jury regarding the June 23 meeting. He adds, “We went back on the second occasion to provide those additional notes that were found, and correct the grand jury testimony reflecting on the June 23 meeting,” and says Miller’s testimony is now “correct, complete, and accurate.” Miller testifies today, as she did on September 30, that Libby disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status to her during discussions they had in June and July 2003, contradicting Libby’s own statements (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Times editor Bill Keller says that the Times will “write the most thorough story we can of her entanglement with the White House leak investigation.” [New York Times, 10/12/2005; National Journal, 10/20/2005]

In an op-ed, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen pleads with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to terminate his investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak. “The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago, and prosecute some real criminals,” Cohen writes. Fitzgerald, Cohen asserts, has accomplished nothing besides jailing New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005) and “repeatedly haul[ing] this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn’t one in the first place but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup—but, again, of nothing much.” Cohen advises Fitzgerald to “[g]o home, Pat.” He says that for administration officials, the investigation is “[n]ot nice,” but is an example of Washington business as usual. “This is rarely considered a crime,” Cohen writes. Perhaps the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, a clandestine CIA agent, “might technically be one,” but Cohen writes that “it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.” Cohen writes that Fitzgerald may be considering indicting White House officials, not for outing Plame Wilson, but for related crimes, perhaps disclosing secrets or on some sort of conspiracy charges. “Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some lefty critics hiss, she’s a double-dealing grandstander, in the manner of some of her accusers.” Cohen says that the larger issue is “control of information,” and explains: “If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration—any administration—is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up. This—this creepy silence—will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame, and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes moi.” Intimidating reporters would have more far-reaching effects than bringing what Cohen calls “trivial charges” to court. “Please, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Cohen concludes, “there’s so much crime in Washington already. Don’t commit another.” [Washington Post, 10/13/2005]

Karl Rove (right) and his lawyer, Robert Luskin. [Source: Doug Mills / The New York Times]White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove testifies for a fourth time before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). [Washington Post, 10/15/2005; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Rove amends and clarifies his earlier testimony, most notably his failure to remember outing Plame Wilson to Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spends a large portion of Rove’s session focusing on the omission. In earlier testimony, Rove attempted to claim that he had only a “hazy recollection” of hearing Plame Wilson’s name (see October 15, 2004) before reading Robert Novak’s column which publicly outed her as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003). He now testifies that he informed Cooper of her status as a CIA agent days before the article appeared, and his memory apparently failed him during his earlier statements to the grand jury. Rove testifies that his recollection was prompted by the discovery of an e-mail message to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, that he wrote after talking to Cooper (see March 1, 2004). [National Journal, 10/7/2005; New York Times, 10/15/2005] He insists that he never identified Plame Wilson by her name, but “merely” as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and did not intentionally reveal her as a covert CIA official because he did not know of her clandestine status. [Washington Post, 10/15/2005] He says he may have learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from fellow White House official Lewis Libby, and says that both he and Libby learned of her CIA employment status from reporters. He says someone else outside the White House also told him of Plame Wilson’s identity, but he cannot remember who that was. [Washington Post, 10/20/2005] Previously, Rove insisted that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from reporters, and not the other way around, as many reporters and others have already testified. Rove has said that one of the reporters who told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA official was Novak, a statement Novak has contradicted (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Rove also testified that he never told Cooper Plame Wilson’s name, but merely identified her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. [Associated Press, 7/15/2005]Rove's Testimony No Distraction, White House Officials Claim - White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Rove’s testimony has not distracted the administration from its usual affairs: “[W]hile there are other things going on, the White House doesn’t have time to let those things distract from the important work at hand.” [New York Times, 10/15/2005] White House chief of staff Andrew Card concurs. “Well, obviously we’re all human beings and we know that there are external activities that impact the environment you’re working in,” he says. “It is something that is there, but it is something that we don’t talk about because it would be inappropriate.… I haven’t found anyone that is distracted because of the ongoing investigation, but we all know that it’s taking place and we’re all working to cooperate with the investigators.” [Washington Post, 10/15/2005]Lawyer: Rove 'Always Honest' with FBI, Jury, President - Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, says that his client “has always attempted to be honest and fully forthcoming” to anyone “he has spoken to about this matter, whether that be the special prosecutor or the president of the United States. My client would not hide anything, because he has nothing to hide. It would not be to his benefit to do so.” Previously, Rove had failed to disclose his discussion with Cooper to either the FBI or to President Bush (see After September 26, 2003). [National Journal, 10/7/2005] “The special counsel has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.” [Washington Post, 10/15/2005]Fitzgerald Mulling Criminal Charges against Rove - Sources close to the Fitzgerald investigation say Rove’s statements to Bush and to the FBI are at the heart of the decision whether or not to charge him with making false statements to investigators, or with obstruction of justice. Lying to the president could in itself be worthy of charges. Law professor Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor and assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, says: “The president is the top law enforcement official of the executive branch. It is a crime to make a false statement to a federal agent. If the president was asking in that capacity, and the statement was purposely false, then you might have a violation of law.” However, if Bush had discussed the matter with Rove in a more informal capacity, then, Little says, a case for making false statements to a federal agent would be more difficult to prove. Law professor Randall Eliason says that if Rove deliberately lied to the president, a prosecutor could construe the lie as an “overt act… in furtherance of a criminal plan.” Law professor Stephen Gillers notes: “Misleading the president, other officials of the executive branch, or even the FBI might not, in and of themselves, constitute criminal acts. But a prosecutor investigating other crimes—such as obstruction of justice or perjury—might use evidence of any such deception to establish criminal intent. And a lack of candor might also negate a claim of good faith or inadvertent error in providing misleading information to prosecutors.” [National Journal, 10/7/2005]

John Hannah, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, begins cooperating with the investigation into the exposure of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. Sources close to the investigation say that Hannah agreed to cooperate after learning that witnesses identified him as a co-conspirator in the Plame Wilson leak. Those sources say that Hannah has not been granted immunity from prosecution, but most likely has been offered a deal in exchange for information that could lead to indictments of any number of White House officials. Sources say that, in June 2003, Hannah and another Cheney aide, David Wurmser (see May 29, 2003), were ordered by their superiors in Cheney’s office to leak Plame Wilson’s name and CIA identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. [Raw Story, 10/19/2005; New York Times, 10/19/2005] Hannah helped pass along information about Plame Wilson’s CIA status from the State Department to Cheney (see May 29, 2003), and provided Cheney with a classified CIA report on the agency’s investigation into Iraq’s supposed attempt to procure uranium from Niger (see June 9, 2003).

David Wurmser, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, begins cooperating with the investigation into the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent. This follows the news that another Cheney aide, John Hannah, is also cooperating (see Before October 17, 2005). The news that Wurmser is cooperating comes from sources close to the investigation. He is expected to provide special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald with evidence that the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity was part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). Wurmser is Cheney’s adviser on Middle East affairs, and formerly served as an assistant to then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton (see May 29, 2003). The sources say Wurmser is cooperating in order to negate potential criminal charges for his role in exposing Plame Wilson’s identity. Wurmser was a key member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG—see August 2002), the propaganda group that operated primarily out of Cheney’s office. The sources say that in June 2003, Wurmser and Hannah were ordered by their superiors in Cheney’s office to leak Plame Wilson’s name and CIA identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson. In 2004, Wurmser was questioned by the FBI for his role in divulging classified national security information to Israel, an investigation that included Hannah and several prominent neoconservatives in the Defense Department. Wilson says: “John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice president’s office, have both been suggested as sources of the leak.… Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level.” [Raw Story, 10/19/2005]

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg. [Source: Paid Content (.org)]Jacob Weisberg, a senior editor of Slate magazine, warns liberals that the possible prosecution of White House official Karl Rove and/or former White House aide Lewis Libby may not be cause for celebration. “Opponents of the Bush administration are anticipating vindication on various fronts—justice for their nemesis Karl Rove, repudiation of George W. Bush’s dishonest case for the Iraq war, a comeuppance for Chalabi-loving reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times, and even some payback for the excesses of independent counsels during the Clinton years,” he writes. Weisberg calls support for the potential prosecutions “self-destructive,” and explains: “Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they’ll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press’s right to find out, the government’s ability to disclose, and the public’s right to know.” Weisberg calls the law that is at the heart of the Plame Wilson investigation, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), “flawed,” and the entire Fitzgerald investigation “misbegotten.” The law is difficult to use for a conviction because it requires that prosecutors prove intent to do harm. “Under the First Amendment, we have a right to debate what is done in our name, even by secret agents,” Weisberg writes. “It may be impossible to criminalize malicious disclosure without hampering essential public debate.” After calling the White House “negligent” and “stupid” for revealing Plame Wilson’s CIA status, he says that no one has shown Rove, Libby, or any other official leaked her name with the intent of causing her or her career harm. Weisberg writes: “[A]fter two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame… knew she was undercover. And as nasty as they might be, it’s not really thinkable that they would have known. You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn’t like in the New York Times” (see July 6, 2003). The outing of Plame Wilson was “accidental,” Weisberg claims, part of the Bush administration’s attempts to defend itself against its failure to find WMD in Iraq. Weisberg calls Fitzgerald “relentless and ambitious,” implying that he is pursuing the case for the fulfillment of his personal ambition, and says that no evidence exists of anyone breaking any laws, whether it be the IIPA, statutes against perjury or conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or anything else. Fitzgerald will indict someone for something, Weisberg states, because not to do so would seem like he failed in his investigation. Fitzgerald is sure to bring what Weisberg calls “creative crap charges of his own devising” against someone, be it a White House official or a reporter. Weisberg concludes by calling Fitzgerald’s investigation “a disaster for freedom of the press and freedom of information.” [Slate, 10/18/2005]

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak is running the risk of moving too far, too fast, and may end up jailing Bush administration officials without good cause. Kristof cites two Republican-driven investigations from the 1990s—the “fanatical” Kenneth Starr investigation of former President Clinton and the “appalling” 10-year pursuit of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros—to warn that the Fitzgerald investigation, like those he cites from the 1990s, may be moving into murkier areas than originally warranted, i.e. the investigation into who leaked the name of a clandestine CIA agent. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may be “considering mushier kinds of indictments,” Kristof writes, “for perjury, obstruction of justice, or revealing classified information. Sure, flat-out perjury must be punished. But if the evidence is more equivocal, then indictments would mark just the kind of overzealous breach of prosecutorial discretion that was a disgrace when Democrats were targeted. And it would be just as disgraceful if Republicans are the targets.” Kristof acknowledges that White House officials “behaved abominably in this affair,” and says, “the idea of a government official secretly using the news media… to attack former Ambassador Joseph Wilson [is] sleazy and outrageous. But a crime? I’m skeptical, even though there seems to have been a coordinated White House campaign against Mr. Wilson” (see October 1, 2003). “My guess is that the participants in a White House senior staff meeting discussed Mr. Wilson’s trip and the charges that the administration had knowingly broadcast false information about uranium in Niger—and then decided to take the offensive. The leak of Mrs. Wilson’s identity resulted from that offensive, but it may well have been negligence rather than vengeance.” Kristof doubts that anyone in the White House knew that Plame Wilson was an undercover agent, and believes that “some official spread the word of Mrs. Wilson’s work at the CIA to make her husband’s trip look like a nepotistic junket.” He calls such behavior “appalling,” and says that columnist Robert Novak “was absolutely wrong to print the disclosure” (see July 14, 2003). “But there’s also no need to exaggerate it,” he concludes. The entire Plame Wilson affair is an example of “backstabbing politics,” he writes, “but not… obvious criminality.” Therefore, Fitzgerald should be wary of handing down indictments, both in the interest of legal restraint and for fear that indicting “White House officials on vague charges of revealing classified information… will have a chilling effect on the reporting of national security issues.” [New York Times, 10/25/2005]

The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson CIA leak investigation hears the summation of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. The final weeks of the jury’s tenure have been marked by what the Washington Post calls “a furious effort” by lawyers for White House political strategist Karl Rove to convince Fitzgerald that Rove should not be prosecuted for perjury. The press is unsure what criminal charges Fitzgerald may have asked the jury to bring, or whether he asked them to vote on possible indictments. The grand jury’s term is expiring, and observers believe Fitzgerald is reluctant to empanel a second grand jury to consider further evidence. Law professor Lori Shaw says this jury is well-versed and invested in the investigation. “You have to consider: They are not rookies at this anymore,” she says. “I have a feeling that by now this grand jury has a good idea of what crime, if any, occurred.” White House officials believe that either Rove or Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and perhaps both of them, will face criminal charges. But the White House is downplaying the current status of the investigation. Press secretary Scott McClellan tells reporters, “We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody’s got a lot of work to do.” And President Bush has tried to shift the public’s attention away from the investigation and onto what he calls his successful economic policies. [Washington Post, 10/27/2005] Two days later, the jury will indict Libby (see October 28, 2005).

The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson CIA leak investigation hears testimony from White House communications official Adam Levine. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald quizzes Levine about conversations he had with White House political strategist Karl Rove, and with neighbors of Valerie Plame Wilson. [Washington Post, 10/27/2005] Levine has already testified before the grand jury (see February 6, 2004).

Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward slams ‘Plamegate’ special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, he calls Fitzgerald’s investigation “disgraceful.” When asked if he knew who might have leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press, Woodward claims—falsely—that he has no idea. “I wish I did have a bombshell,” he says. “I don’t even have a firecracker.” The leak, he says, is merely “gossip and chatter” of interest only to “a junkyard-dog prosecutor” like Fitzgerald who “goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks and rocks under rocks and so forth.” Woodward also claims that the CIA’s assessment of the damage likely to have been done by the leak is “minimal.” Woodward says: “They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn’t have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment. So people have kind of compared—somebody was saying this was [similar to the cases of convicted spies] Aldrich Ames or Bob Hanssen, big spies. This didn’t cause damage.” Woodward is ignoring reports that the damage caused by the leak may well have been severe and widespread (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006); he also fails to note an upcoming report by his own newspaper that notes the CIA has not yet completed its assessment of the damage, but speculates as to just how severe the damage is believed to be (see October 29, 2005). [CNN, 10/27/2005; Media Matters, 10/31/2005; Media Matters, 11/16/2005; Time, 11/20/2005] Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003). He has also withheld his knowledge of the case from Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005).

In light of the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see October 28, 2005), the Center for American Progress (CAP) puts out an analysis of Libby’s role as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and the impact Libby has had on Bush administration policies. Libby, a powerful and influential neoconservative, “has been one of the most important men pulling the levers behind the Bush administration,” the article finds. “From the very beginning of the administration, Libby has essentially been Dick Cheney’s Dick Cheney.” But, the article goes on to note: “[w]hat few have realized at this historic moment is that for the past four and a half years, Libby has been ‘scooting’ from scandal to scandal. Libby has been at center stage for the other major national security scandals of the Bush administration, including the Iraq intelligence debacle, the secret meetings about Halliburton contracts, and doubtless others we have not heard of yet. It was Libby—along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House—who convinced the president that the US should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11. It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations” (see February 5, 2003). Libby co-authored the controversial Defense Planning Guidance document of 1988 (see February 18, 1992) that called on the US to essentially transform itself into an aggressive empire, using its military to stretch its power around the world. “This Planning Guidance document went a long way toward endearing Libby to Cheney,” the CAP article reads. There is also evidence that Libby helped steer no-bid Iraqi reconstruction contracts to Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton. The article concludes, “Given the depth of his influence in shaping the White House agenda over the past four and a half years, losing Libby today is not only a huge blow to the vice president, but to the entire Bush administration.” [Center for American Progress, 10/28/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is dismissive of the indictment of White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), saying, “I don’t know how this is about the buildup to the war, the Valerie Plame Wilson issue.” He dismisses the entire Plame Wilson investigation as mere White House gossiping. Woodward has his own peripheral involvement in Plame Wilson’s outing, which he keeps secret for years (see June 13, 2003) and November 16-17, 2005); according to author Frank Rich, that makes him a prime example of journalistic hypocrisy. Rich will add that it is hard to fathom how any journalist could come to such a conclusion. Rich will write: “If one assumes, as Woodward apparently did, against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the White House acted in good faith purveying its claims of imminent doomsday and pre-9/11 Qaeda-Saddam collaboration, then there’s no White House wrongdoing that needs covering up. So why would anyone in the administration try to do something nasty to silence a whistle-blower like Joseph Wilson? Where’s the story?” [Rich, 2006, pp. 191]

Hours after the Patrick Fitzgerald press conference announcing the indictment of Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell tells a viewing audience on MSNBC’s Hardball that the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA official whose exposure as a covert agent triggered the investigation that led to Libby’s indictment, did no real damage to US intelligence interests. Mitchell does not cite any sources in her claim. She says: “I think the prosecutor [Fitzgerald] made a very broad claim, whether you buy it or not, that the disclosure of any CIA officer’s identity is a threat to our national security, that we are at a stage in our country where we need to recruit people, we need to guarantee that they will have anonymity, and that you cannot recruit people to work in these difficult jobs, nor can you be sure that by disclosing their identity that you are not putting them in jeopardy. I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.” It is possible that Mitchell sources her claim from a very similar claim made the night before by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (see October 27, 2005). [Jane Hamsher, 11/29/2005] Two years before, Mitchell told a CNBC audience that “everybody knew” Plame Wilson was a covert official, a claim she was later forced to retract (see October 3, 2003). Shortly after Mitchell’s Hardball claim, MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson writes, “In fact, as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has reported, an internal CIA investigation found that Plame’s outing caused no discernable damage to anyone.” [MSNBC, 11/18/2005] A 2003 CIA assessment (see Before September 16, 2003) and an October 2005 analysis by the Washington Post (see October 29, 2005) both determined that Plame Wilson’s exposure caused “severe damage” to the US intelligence community, particularly in the Middle East.

Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley writes in the online magazine Slate that he finds the entire Niger-Plame-Libby issue “confusing” and incoherent. After mocking a variety of aspects of the case (“Niger, which is not Nigeria,” the “Pynchonesque… mysterious beauty” of the surname “Plame,” the forgettable blandness of the name Joe Wilson, and the nickname “Scooter,” or perhaps “Snooker” or “Snotty,” of accused leaker Lewis Libby), and portraying the entire issue as the plot of a forgettable film noir or perhaps a Shakespeare knockoff, he calls the “whole prosecution nuts.” [Slate, 10/28/2005]

Screen graphic from CNN’s coverage of Lewis Libby’s indictment. [Source: CNN / Flickr]Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby is accused of “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA agent, to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), and then lying about it to the FBI and to a grand jury empaneled by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see December 30, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Libby immediately resigns his position as Cheney’s chief of staff. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; CNN, 5/14/2006; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]Five Counts of Obstruction, Two Counts of Perjury - Libby is indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of perjury. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] Though the original investigation was of the Plame Wilson leak, Fitzgerald says it is important to understand that Libby’s crimes, though not the prime focus of the initial investigation, should be prosecuted as well. “Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts,” he says. The indictment does not charge Libby with knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert agent. [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Confirms that CIA Agent's Status Classified; Important to National Security - Fitzgerald confirms that the fact of Plame Wilson’s employment at the CIA was in and of itself classified information, and not to be shared to the media or the public. He says: “The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It’s important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation’s security.… [T]he damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). [New York Times, 10/28/2005; Nation, 3/16/2007]Libby Lied about Knowledge of Plame Wilson's Status, Indictment Charges - The indictment charges that Libby lied when he claimed that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see November 24, 2003, March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and August 7, 2004). Instead, the indictment charges, Libby learned about Plame Wilson and her possible role in sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) from a number of people, including an undersecretary of state (see June 10, 2003), a CIA officer who regularly briefed him on national security issues (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), an unidentified “senior CIA officer,” and from his superior, Cheney (see (June 12, 2003)). In his turn, Libby shared that information with several officials in the Office of the Vice President, including Cheney’s senior counsel David Addington (see July 8, 2003), Cheney’s national security adviser John Hannah (see May 29, 2003), and Cheney’s press secretary at the time, Cathie Martin (who may have actually informed Libby—see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003). “In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson” (see June 23, 2003), Fitzgerald says. “[T]o be frank, Mr. Libby gave the FBI a compelling story,” he adds. “It would be a compelling story that will lead the FBI to go away if only it were true. It is not true, according to the indictment.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; National Journal, 10/30/2005] (The unidentified “senior CIA officer” is later revealed to be Frederick Fleitz, who served both as a senior officer at the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) desk and as Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s chief of staff—see (June 11, 2003).) [Raw Story, 11/2/2005] Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney who writes for the progressive blog TalkLeft, notes that according to the indictment, the phrases used by Libby in his denials to the grand jury were nearly verbatim echoes of Cheney’s own denials as told to NBC’s Tim Russert in September 2003 (see September 14, 2003). [Jeralyn Merritt, 10/31/2005]Sought Information on Plame Wilson's CIA Status - The indictment also charges that Libby sought information from the CIA and the State Department about Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and tried to determine whether she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger. According to the indictment, Libby asked David Addington, the chief counsel to Cheney, “in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee’s spouse undertook an overseas trip.” The court papers do not say what action, if any, Addington may have taken in response to Libby’s request. [New York Times, 10/28/2005; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; National Journal, 12/16/2005]Discussed with Multiple Officials before Leaking to Reporters - In a press conference, Fitzgerald walks reporters and listeners through the indictment: from Libby’s learning of Plame Wilson’s identity from State Department and CIA sources and from Cheney, through his discussing it with at least three White House officials, all before the supposed “disclosure” from Russert. Libby subsequently lied to the FBI and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury about those discussions with government officials and again with Miller and Time reporter Matthew Cooper. “[H]e lied about it afterwards,” Fitzgerald says, “under oath and repeatedly.… [A]nyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct, and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Leak Seriously Jeopardized National Security - Fitzgerald tells reporters that the leaking of a CIA officer’s identity is a serious breach of national security. “This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter,” he says. “But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important.” Fitzgerald continues: “At a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone’s identity could be compromised lightly… [discourages] our ability to recruit people and say, ‘Come work for us… come be trained… come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you.” Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says: “Revealing the identity of a covert agent is the type of leak that gets people killed. Not only does it end the person’s career… it puts that person in grave personal danger as well as their colleagues and all the people they have had contact with.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; National Journal, 10/30/2005]Charges Are Serious, Not 'Technicalities' - Responding to a question about Republican charges that Libby is being charged as a “technicality,” and Fitzgerald “overreached” his authority in filing the indictment, Fitzgerald says: “That talking point won’t fly. If you’re doing a national security investigation, if you’re trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven… that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.… [T]he truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.… Any notion that anyone might have that there’s a different standard for a high official, that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice and perjury, is upside down.… If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it’s a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005]Explanation for Delay in Filing Indicitment - Fitzgerald gives one reason for the delay in filing the indictment against Libby. When asked why he went to such lengths to compel the testimony of reporters such as Miller (see September 30, 2005) and Cooper (see July 13, 2005), Fitzgerald replies that the rights of the accused are paramount in his mind. The testimony of Miller, Cooper, and other journalists could bolster the case against Libby, or could help exonerate him. The possibility that he might charge someone, only to learn later that one of the journalists who had declined to testify had information to clear the person, was something that “frightens me,” Fitzgerald says. “I think the only way you can do an investigation like this is to hear all eyewitnesses.” [New York Times, 10/28/2005; National Journal, 11/12/2005]No Charges against Cheney - Asked whether the investigation found evidence of criminal acts by Cheney, Fitzgerald answers: “We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act. But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I’m not going to comment on anything.” Fitzgerald refuses to comment on whether White House political strategist Karl Rove or anyone else will be named as co-conspirators, charged, or even named in court. [New York Times, 10/28/2005]

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, writes a letter to committee chairman Tom Davis (D-VA), asking that the committee open an investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak. Waxman’s letter will not receive a response. Davis has already ignored four similar letters from Waxman (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, December 11, 2003, and July 11, 2005). [Waxman, 12/2005]

David Addington. [Source: Richard A. Bloom / Corbis]David Addington, the chief counsel for Vice President Dick Cheney, is named Cheney’s chief of staff to replace Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame Wilson case (see February 13, 2002). [National Journal, 10/30/2005; MSNBC, 11/4/2005] Addington is described by one White House official as “the most powerful man you never heard of.” A former Justice Department official says of Addington, “He seems to have his hand in everything, and he has these incredible powers, energy, reserves in an obsessive, zealot’s kind of way.” He is, according to former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, Cheney’s “eyes, ears, and voice.” [US News and World Report, 5/21/2006] Addington is a neoconservative ideologue committed to dramatically expanding the power of the presidency, and a powerful advocate of the “unitary executive” theory of presidential power. He has been with Cheney for years, ever since Cheney chose him to serve as the Pentagon’s chief counsel while Cheney was Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan. During that time, Addington was an integral part of Cheney’s battle to keep the Iran-Contra scandal from exploding (see 1984). [Washington Post, 10/11/2004; National Journal, 10/30/2005; MSNBC, 11/4/2005; US News and World Report, 5/21/2006] According to Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, documentary evidence shows that Cheney’s office, and Addington in particular, were responsible for giving at least tacit approval for US soldiers to abuse and torture prisoners in Iraq (see January 9, 2002). In an administration devoted to secrecy, Addington stands out in his commitment to keeping information away from the public. [Washington Post, 10/11/2004] Though Addington claims to have a lifelong love affair with the Constitution, his interpretation of it is somewhat unusual. One senior Congressional staffer says, “The joke around here is that Addington looks at the Constitution and sees only Article II, the power of the presidency.” [US News and World Report, 5/21/2006] Addington’s influence in the White House is pervasive. He scrutinizes every page of the federal budget, hunting for riders that might restrict the power of the president. He worked closely with Gonzales to oppose attempts by Congress to pry information from the executive branch, and constantly battles the State Department, whose internationalist philosophy is at odds with his and Cheney’s own beliefs. [Washington Post, 10/11/2004] Former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein calls Addington the “intellectual brainchild” of overreaching legal assertions that “have resulted in actually weakening the presidency because of intransigence.” According to Fein, Addington and Cheney are doing far more than reclaiming executive authority, they are seeking to push it farther than it has ever gone under US constitutional authority. They have already been successful in removing executive restraints formerly in place under the War Powers Act, anti-impoundment legislation, the legislative veto and the independent counsel statute. “They’re in a time warp,” Fein says. “If you look at the facts, presidential powers have never been higher.” [Washington Post, 10/11/2004] “He thinks he’s on the side of the angels,” says a former Justice Department official. “And that’s what makes it so scary.” [US News and World Report, 5/21/2006]

In an op-ed, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial staff accuses special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of “criminalizing politics” in his investigation of the Plame Wilson leak. Fitzgerald’s investigation, the editorial reads, has taken two years, cost millions of dollars, jailed a reporter (see July 6, 2005), “and preoccupied some of the White House’s senior officials.” The investigation has culminated in the indictment of former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), not for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press, but for what the Journal calls “contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used.” The Journal writes that there is no evidence, at least to the public’s knowledge, that Libby lied to anyone, be it the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), or anyone else. Nowhere has anyone alleged a motive for Libby’s alleged perjury, the Journal states (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). And, the Journal notes, Libby was not a source for the column that actually outed Plame Wilson as a CIA official. The Journal questions the existence of any White House “conspiracy to silence administration critics,” and if there was, it writes, “it was more daft than deft.” Instead, the Journal writes, the Libby indictment “amounts to an allegation that one official lied about what he knew about an underlying ‘crime’ that wasn’t committed.” Fitzgerald is merely involving himself in what the Journal calls “a policy dispute between an elected administration and critics of the president’s approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/29/2005]

The Washington Post publishes an article about the severity of the damage done by the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak. The Post notes that the CIA has not yet completed its damage assessment, because it usually waits until criminal investigations have concluded. But when Plame Wilson and her front company, Brewster Jennings, were exposed as clandestine CIA entities, the damage was believed to have been widespread (see October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, and October 23-24, 2003). CIA officials have compiled a long list of Plame Wilson’s contacts and friends both in the US and overseas who may have been exposed as her contacts. Current and former intelligence officials say there is no way to know if the leak has cost anyone their life as yet. Former CIA division chief Arthur Brown says: “Cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units. In the case of the military, they can pack up and go elsewhere. In the case of a serving clandestine officer, it’s the end of that officer’s ability to function in that role.” Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says, “Blowing the cover of a CIA officer is the cardinal sin in the intelligence business: It could wipe out information networks and put lives at risk.” Certainly Plame Wilson’s ability to function as a clandestine CIA agent has forever been destroyed. Former senior CIA manager Mark Lowenthal says: “It’s possible that no damage was done [to national security] but she can never [work] overseas again.… You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.” Ultimately, the public will never know just how extensive the damage may be. One intelligence official says, “You’ll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were.” [Washington Post, 10/29/2005] The press is not yet aware of an in-house CIA assessment of the “severe” damage caused to the agency by the leak (see Before September 16, 2003).

After former White House official Lewis Libby’s indictment (see October 28, 2005), he retains the services of three of Washington’s most powerful attorneys: Theodore Wells, William Jeffress, and John Cline. [Boston Globe, 2/26/2006] (Cline will not officially join the defense team until mid-November.) [San Francisco Chronicle, 11/22/2005] Wells, who has successfully defended other government officials from criminal charges, is “an excellent choice,” according to criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt. Jeffress is a partner at Baker Botts, the law firm headed by former Secretary of State James Baker. [Jeralyn Merritt, 11/3/2005] Cline is an expert on classified government documents; according to former CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, he is “presumably hired to help the defense figure out how to ‘graymail’ the government, that is, force the government to choose between prosecuting an employee for serious crimes or preserving national security secrets.” Stanford University criminal law expert Robert Weisberg says of Cline’s addition to the team: “This is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the government. This suggests they are going to use a very concerted and aggressive strategy.” Legal Defense Fund Headed by GOP Fundraiser - Shortly after the indictment, Libby’s legal defense fund is created, headed by former GOP finance chief Melvin Sembler, a Florida real estate tycoon. Sembler is a highly successful fundraiser for Republican candidates, and is a close friend of Vice President Dick Cheney. Lobbyist and former Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, a close friend of Libby’s, recruited Sembler to head the fund. According to Comstock, Sembler “holds Scooter [Libby] in high esteem as many members of the committee have. We’re confident that Scooter will be exonerated. He has declared he’s innocent.” [Tampa Tribune, 11/24/2005] In her 2007 book Fair Game, Plame Wilson will note, “Sembler, ironically enough, was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Italy when the embassy in Rome first received the forged yellowcake documents, whose contents precipitated [Joseph Wilson]‘s trip to Niger and Libby’s legal odyssey.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 289-290] The first contribution to the defense fund comes from Richard Carlson, a former US ambassador, the former president of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and the father of conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. “He spent years in government service,” Carlson will later say of Libby, whom Carlson calls a friend. He “hasn’t made a lot of dough.” The fund will soon raise over $2 million, in part through a Web site, scooterlibby.com (see February 21, 2006). Comstock and former Cheney communications director Mary Matalin (see July 10, 2003 and January 23, 2004) are deeply involved in the fund. The fund’s board of directors and advisers is studded with prominent Republicans, including former Republican presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp; former senator, lobbyist, and actor Fred Thompson; former senator Alan Simpson; former Education Secretary William Bennett; Princeton professor Bernard Lewis, one of the driving intellectual forces behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq; former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; former Clinton Middle East envoy Dennis Ross; and former CIA Director James Woolsey, another neoconservative ally of Libby’s. [New York Times, 11/18/2005; San Francisco Chronicle, 11/22/2005; Boston Globe, 2/26/2006] Howard Leach and Wayne Berman, two top fundraisers for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, are also part of the defense fund. Comstock tells a New York Times reporter that because both Ross and Woolsey served in the Clinton administration, the Libby defense fund is a bipartisan entity. She adds that the amount of money raised by the fund will not be disclosed: “It’s a private trust fund for a private individual and we haven’t disclosed that.” [New York Times, 11/18/2005; Tampa Tribune, 11/24/2005]Plame Wilson Disappointed in Woolsey's Involvement - Plame Wilson will write of her disappointment that a former CIA director (Woolsey) could come to the defense of someone accused of outing a covert CIA agent. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 289-290]

After White House official Lewis Libby is indicted (see October 28, 2005), Washington Post editor and reporter Bob Woodward “realizes” that he was a recipient of the information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA official (see June 13, 2003). Woodward has been scathing in his criticism of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation, and staunch in his support of the journalists who outed Plame Wilson in their reporting (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, October 27, 2005, and October 28, 2005). According to Woodward’s own recollections, he was asked by Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. to help report on the status of the investigation into the leak. Woodward will say that upon listening to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald tell reporters that Libby was the first White House official to reveal Plame Wilson’s name to a reporter (see June 23, 2003), he realizes that Fitzgerald is misinformed. Instead, Woodward had received that information from another Bush administration source 10 days before Libby. (Woodward’s source was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a fact that Woodward does not disclose to the media, and is not publicly revealed for nearly six months—see March 14, 2006). Woodward quickly telephones his source (Armitage), and will tell another reporter: “I said it was clear to me that the source had told me [about Wilson’s wife] in mid-June, and this person could check his or her records and see that it was mid-June. My source said he or she had no alternative but to go to the prosecutor. I said, ‘If you do, am I released?’” Woodward is referring to the confidentiality agreement between the two. The source agrees, but only for purposes of discussing it with Fitzgerald, not for publication. Woodward later says he tried twice, once in 2004 and once earlier in 2005, to persuade Armitage to remove the confidentiality restriction, but Armitage refused to budge. Woodward informs Fitzgerald of his contact with Armitage, as does Armitage. While Armitage has spoken to the FBI about his role in leaking Plame Wilson’s identity (see October 2, 2003), and to the grand jury investigating the leak (in which he failed to divulge his contact with Woodward—see September 22, 2004), Woodward has not spoken to Fitzgerald until now, though his name appears on numerous White House telephone and visitors’ logs during the critical period of June and July 2003. Woodward will say he is surprised not to have been contacted by Fitzgerald, and, in contrast to his earlier criticisms of Fitzgerald, will call him “incredibly sensitive to what we do. He didn’t infringe on my other reporting, which frankly surprised me. He said, ‘This is what I need, I don’t need any more.’” [Time, 11/18/2005; Washington Post, 8/29/2006] Woodward will soon give a deposition to Fitzgerald, and will write about his role in the leak for the Post (see November 14, 2005).

The Washington Post prints an article by reporter Barton Gellman about the intelligence leaks from the White House that led to the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. The article examines the question of whether Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, obstructed the FBI investigation into Plame Wilson’s exposure in order to protect Cheney. [Washington Post, 10/30/2005] According to journalist and blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, the Post deleted a key portion of Gellman’s story shortly after it appeared on the Post’s Web site (the edited version is what makes it into print). The deleted portion noted that on July 12, 2003, Cheney told Libby “to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson’s credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source” (see July 12, 2003 and 3:20 a.m. July 12, 2003). [Joshua Micah Marshall, 10/30/2005] A criminal lawyer who blogs under the moniker “Anonymous Liberal” speculates that the Post may have removed the reference to Fleischer because Fleischer was a source for Post reporter Walter Pincus. Pincus is identified in Gellman’s article as receiving information from an unidentified White House source who, like Libby, attacked Wilson and implied that he was sent to Niger by his wife (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). [Anonymous Liberal, 10/30/2005]

Terry Moran, ABC News’s chief White House correspondent, tells ABC host George Stephanopoulos that he believes White House press secretary Scott McClellan unwittingly lied to reporters when he asserted that White House staffers Karl Rove (see September 16, 2003, September 27, 2003, September 29, 2003, and September 29, 2003) and Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see October 4, 2003 and October 4, 2003) knew nothing of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak. “He was telling falsehoods right at us over and over unwittingly,” Moran says. Asked if McClellan knew he was lying, Moran replies: “No. And he signaled he wants to tell us the story,” referring to McClellan’s comments that he would like to be able to discuss his public support of Rove and Libby. Stephanopoulos asks, “[Y]ou say he didn’t know it, so that means Karl Rove lied to him?” “Yes,” Moran answers, “yes.” Moran notes that the White House will most likely do nothing except continue to “stonewall” and deny involvement: “My sense it right now they’ll kick this down the road. They’ll say it’s a continuing case and we’re going to kick it down the road.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 265-266]

Syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas writes that because the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation is nothing more than a witch hunt to tar Bush administration officials over the war in Iraq, the special prosecutor law under which Patrick Fitzgerald is conducting his investigation should be abolished. According to Thomas, President Clinton was lauded by the media, and his investigator, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, was universally portrayed as a “sex maniac with a political agenda” who was hounding a “decent man” over a legal, if morally questionable, sexual liaison. “Thus, Clinton’s lies under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky were not a big deal.” The media is giving “saturation coverage” to the Libby indictments, Thomas claims, while it gave “short shrift” to Clinton administration indictments such as then-Agriculture Secretary Michael Espy and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. The situation is different with accused perjurer Lewis Libby, Thomas writes (see October 28, 2005). Fitzgerald is being praised by media pundits as “an apolitical straight-shooter who is the definition of integrity” (see December 30, 2003, January 1, 2004, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, October 13, 2005, October 18, 2005, October 25, 2005, October 27, 2005, and October 29, 2005), and is running a fair and non-partisan investigation into crimes committed by Libby and perhaps other White House officials. According to Thomas, Fitzgerald is doing little more than working for administration critics who didn’t get their way over Iraq: “[t]hose who lost the policy battle over going to war are now fighting a rear-guard action in an attempt to damage the Bush administration and win the political war in time for the 2006 Congressional elections and certainly by the 2008 presidential contest.” Thomas says that since the Independent Counsel Law was passed in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, it has brought few convictions and cost taxpayers an inordinate amount of money. “Enough Democrats and Republicans have been forced to run this gauntlet that perhaps a truly bipartisan solution can be found to end it,” Thomas concludes. “That Libby’s indictments are not about policy, but about who remembers what and when, ought to be the final straw in this ridiculous process.” [Town Hall (.com), 10/31/2005]

After meeting with President George Bush in Washington, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tells Italian reporters, “Bush himself confirmed to me that the USA did not have any information [about alleged uranium sales from Niger to Iraq] from Italian [intelligence] agencies.”
[White House, 11/2/2005]

The Wall Street Journal prints an editorial by former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson lambasting the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation and the indictment of former White House aide Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), and criticizing the use of the Independent Counsel Law to investigate the Plame Wilson identity leak. The Journal does not inform its readers of Olson’s participation in using the Independent Counsel Law to bring articles of impeachment against former President Clinton. Olson calls the investigation a “spectacle,” questions special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s impartiality, and says the entire Plame Wilson-Libby investigation is another example of “special prosecutor syndrome,” a politically motivated investigation run amok. Olson writes that he does not believe Libby is guilty of perjury because “I know him to be an honest, conscientious man who has given a large part of his life to public service.” Any misstatements Libby may have made to investigators (see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004) must have been inadvertent failures of memory and not deliberate lies. Moreover, Olson asserts, Libby had nothing to do with exposing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official (see
(see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). [Wall Street Journal, 10/31/2005]

The press learns that UN Ambassador John Bolton was contacted in May 2003 by Lewis Libby to find out who sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and May 29, 2003). Bolton was the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs when Libby contacted him. The progressive news Web site Raw Story learns of the Bolton contact from lawyers involved in the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak, and from documents posted on the investigation’s Web site. The lawyers say that two former Libby aides, John Hannah and David Wurmser, informed special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of Libby’s inquiry to Bolton (see Before October 17, 2005 and Before October 19, 2005). At the time, Wurmser was on loan from Bolton’s office and serving as a Middle Eastern affairs aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby. Both Hannah and Wurmser have been cooperating with Fitzgerald’s investigation, the lawyers say. MSNBC has reported that Bolton testified before the Plame Wilson grand jury. Wurmser, the lawyers say, has been cooperating for fear that he would be charged for his role in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity; Hannah began cooperating after learning that he had been identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak. Raw Story writes: “It is unclear whether Bolton played any other role in the Plame outing, but his connection to the Iraq uranium claims certainly gave him a motive to discredit Wilson, who had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. A probe by the State Department inspector general revealed that Bolton’s office was responsible for the placement of the Niger uranium claims in the State Department’s December 2002 ‘fact sheet’ on Iraq’s WMD program.” The lawyers say it is doubtful that the information Hannah and Wurmser have provided will ever be made public, but their information was crucial to Fitzgerald’s investigation because it allowed him “to put together a timeline that showed how various governmental agencies knew about Plame [Wilson]‘s covert CIA status.” [Raw Story, 11/2/2005]

Philip Agee. [Source: Moonbattery (.com)]Philip Agee, the former CIA officer who publicly exposed a number of CIA agents in the 1970s and whose actions led to the enactment of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, says he now opposes such activities and condemns the disclosure of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity by senior White House officials. “I had my reasons for revealing the identities of agents and the White House had different ones,” Agee says. “However, I am now categorically opposed to making their names public.” Agee is quoted in the Greek newspaper To Vima tis Kiriakis and is later translated by the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service. [FAS Project on Government Secrecy, 11/4/2005]

Retired Army General Paul Vallely, a military analyst employed by Fox News (see Early 2002 and Beyond, Late September 2003, April 14-16, 2006, and April 18, 2006), says that former ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed his wife’s status as a CIA official over a year before she was exposed by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003). Vallely’s claims are published by WorldNetDaily (WND), an online conservative news site, after Vallely makes the claims on an ABC Radio talk show hosted by conservative commentator and blogger John Batchelor. Fox News has described Vallely as an expert on psychological warfare (see April 21, 2003). Vallely says Wilson openly discussed his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA official between three and five times in 2002, while the two waited to appear on various Fox News broadcasts. Both Vallely and Wilson served as analysts for Fox News during the US’s run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Vallely says the first time Wilson discussed his wife’s CIA status was in the spring of 2002. “He was rather open about his wife working at the CIA,” Vallely says. “He was a total self promoter,” Vallely continues. “I don’t know if it was out of insecurity, to make him feel important, but he’s created so much turmoil, he needs to be investigated and put under oath.” Vallely also says that several acquaintances of his at the CIA have said Wilson routinely introduced his wife as a CIA official at Washington cocktail parties and social events. “That was pretty common knowledge,” he says. “She’s been out there on the Washington scene many years.” If she were a covert agent, Valley says (see Fall 1992 - 1996), “he would not have paraded her around as he did.” Vallely concludes, “This whole thing has become the biggest non-story I know, and all created by Joe Wilson.” Conservative lawyer Victoria Toensing agrees that Plame Wilson is most likely not a covert agent for the agency. WND does not report Wilson’s response to Vallely’s charges, and in several critical references to a Vanity Fair interview given by the Wilsons (see January 2004) the blog misidentifies the date of the interview publication as 2005, not 2004. [WorldNetDaily, 11/5/2005]CIA Confirmed Plame Wilson's Covert Status - The CIA has repeatedly confirmed Plame Wilson as a covert official, and many observers both inside and outside the agency have noted the extensive damage caused by her exposure (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). Fox News, Conservative Blogs Report Claims - Three days after Vallely’s claims appear on WND, Fox News reports Vallely’s statements. [Fox News, 11/8/2005] And a day after the WND article, Batchelor announces on prominent conservative blog RedState that another analyst will confirm Vallely’s claims. Batchelor says that on November 7, Vallely and retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney will “repeat and expand upon Vallely’s memory that Joe Wilson more than once in 2002 in the green room at Fox New Channel in Washington, DC, boasted about his wife the ‘CIA desk officer.’ McInerney has the same memory and more, since both he and Vallely were on FNC between 150 and 200 times in 2002 each.” [John Batchelor, 11/6/2005]Wilson Demands Retraction, Counters Claim - Wilson’s attorney, Christopher Wolf, e-mails both Vallely and WND demanding that they retract Vallely’s statements, writing that “the claim that Ambassador Wilson revealed to you or to anyone that his wife worked for the CIA is patently false.” In the e-mail, Wolf includes a message Wilson sent him: “This is slanderous. I never appeared on [TV] before at least July 2002 and only saw him maybe twice in the green room at Fox. Vallely is a retired general and this is a bald faced lie. Can we sue? This is not he said/he said, since I never laid eyes on him till several months after he alleges I spoke to him about my wife.” Vallely Modifies Original Claim, Others Refuse to Confirm - Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that in subsequent days, Vallely modifies his original claims, backing down to claim that Wilson revealed his wife’s CIA status on “only one occasion,” which “probably was in that summer, early fall” of 2002. And promises that two other military analysts, retired generals McInerney and Barry McCaffrey, will back up his claims go unfulfilled, as neither is willing to publicly state that Wilson ever spoke to them about his wife. Vallely later says he has not spoken to the FBI about his claims, and tells conservative talk show host Sean Hannity that he waited two years to make the claims because “I figured Joe Wilson would self-destruct at some point in time.” He tells Hannity that he has been “upset” by Wilson’s opposition to the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. [Media Matters, 11/9/2005] Batchelor’s promise that fellow conservative commentator Victor Davis Hansen will also confirm the claim also goes unfulfilled. [John Batchelor, 11/6/2005] WND notes, “But contrary to a report, Hanson said Wilson did not disclose his wife’s CIA employment” during their conversations. [WorldNetDaily, 11/8/2005]Fox News Schedule Shows Vallely, Wilson Never Appeared Together - Progressive blogger John Amato and former CIA agent Larry Johnson pore through the Fox News schedule for the time period Vallely cites—the spring of 2002—and find that Vallely and Wilson never appeared together during that time. Johnson writes: “They were never in the studio on the same day, much less the same program. Vallely is lying or maybe having a senior moment.” [John Amato, 11/7/2005]

General Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy’s military intelligence agency SISMI, identifies former SISMI agent and information peddler Rocco Martino as the disseminator of forged documents that alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger (see March 2000, Late June 2002, Afternoon October 7, 2002, and Summer 2004). Pollari discloses Martino’s identity in closed-door hearings conducted by the Italian parliament. Senator Massimo Brutti tells reporters that Martino is a former SISMI agent who had been “kicked out of the agency.” Brutti also tells reporters that Italy attempted to warn the US that the documents were forgeries, but then retracts the claim (see November 3, 2005). Senator Luigi Malabarba, another participant in the hearing, tells reporters that according to Pollari, Martino was “offering the documents not on behalf of SISMI but on behalf of the French,” and that Martino told prosecutors in Rome that he was in the service of French intelligence. A senior French intelligence official refuses to say whether Martino has ever been a paid agent of French intelligence, but calls Pollari’s assertions about France’s involvement in the document dissemination “scandalous.” Pollari denies any involvement in the document forging or dissemination by SISMI. [New York Times, 11/4/2005]

Three Democratic congressmen ask Vice President Dick Cheney to testify in the upcoming trial of his former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, even as Libby pled not guilty to five felony counts stemming from the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak investigation (see November 3, 2005). Henry Waxman (D-CA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and John Conyers (D-MI) send a letter to Cheney asking why Cheney’s office gathered information on Valerie Plame Wilson in 2003, whether Cheney directed Libby to leak Plame Wilson’s name to reporters, and whether Cheney knew Libby was leaking that information. “[T]here are many wide-ranging questions about your involvement,” they write. The three congressmen also ask more general questions, such as if Cheney knew the administration’s claims that Iraq sought uranium from Niger were false even as the White House was using those claims to justify its war with Iraq. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride says that Cheney will cooperate with the Justice Department as the criminal investigation of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald moves forward. Cheney and other White House officials could be called to testify if Libby goes to trial. [Associated Press, 11/3/2005]

Lawyer Theodore Wells (left) speaks, while Lewis Libby and others look on. Libby is on crutches due to a recent foot injury. [Source: Associated Press]Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, pleads not guilty to five felony indictments stemming from the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak (see October 28, 2005). “With respect, your honor, I plead not guilty,” Libby says. Libby’s trial will be presided over by Judge Reggie Walton of the US District Court of the District of Columbia; Libby is primarily represented by lawyers Ted Wells and William Jeffress, both known for winning acquittals in high-profile white-collar criminal cases. Wells recently won acquittals for former Agriculture Secretary Michael Espy and former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, while Jeffress is a partner at Baker Botts, where former Secretary of State James Baker, a close friend of the Bush family, is a senior partner. Libby waives his right to a speedy trial; it will take his legal team three months to obtain security clearances and to examine classified information the prosecution must provide to the defense. His lawyers are expected to demand that a large amount of classified information regarding Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status be turned over to them. Jeffress warns reporters that there could be numerous First Amendment “issues” that may produce “protracted litigation” and delay the case, obviously referring to the expected testimony of a number of journalists. Libby’s next court date is February 3, 2006. [Associated Press, 11/3/2005; Washington Post, 11/3/2005] Libby is apparently in good spirits during the proceedings, smiling and even laughing with his lawyers. [Salon, 11/3/2005] Outside the courthouse, Wells tells reporters: “In pleading not guilty, [Libby] has declared to the world that he is innocent. He has declared that intends to fight the charges in the indictment, and he has declared that he wants to clear his good name.” He adds that Libby welcomes a jury trial. Libby does not speak to reporters. [CNN, 11/3/2005] Former prosecutor Michael Madigan, now a well-known defense lawyer, says Wells and Jeffress are excellent choices to represent Libby, but notes that they are joining the case with “one hand tied behind their back” because of what has already transpired in the investigation. They enter the case “with Libby having given two different statements to the FBI and testifying twice to the grand jury, in which he contradicts three reporters and four or five of his friends in the administration,” Madigan says. “If I was entering the case, I would not be really happy to have that situation.… It would be difficult now to say that you didn’t recall certain things when you’ve already testified that you did remember them.” [Washington Post, 11/3/2005]

Victoria Toensing, a former deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, writes a guest editorial for the Wall Street Journal that demands the Plame Wilson investigation, as it stands, be closed. Instead, she says, the CIA should be investigated for causing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to become public knowledge. Toensing blames the CIA’s “bizarre conduct” for Plame Wilson’s exposure. The CIA is responsible for Plame Wilson’s exposure, Toensing states, by allowing her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger to look into claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Toensing writes that Plame Wilson “suggested” her husband for the trip (see February 13, 2002, February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). The CIA did not have Wilson write a report, but instead conducted an oral debriefing (see March 4-5, 2002, (March 6, 2002), and March 8, 2002) that, Toensing writes, was never sent to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office (see March 5, 2002). Wilson’s subsequent New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003) was not approved or vetted with the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board, something Toensing finds puzzling even though she notes that Wilson was not asked to sign a nondisclosure or confidentiality agreement. She also alleges, without giving specifics, that the statements in Wilson’s op-ed do not jibe with the information in the CIA’s report on his trip, though that report is classified and not available for her inspection. For the CIA to allow Wilson to write the op-ed was, Toensing says, tantamount to giving a green light for Plame Wilson’s exposure as a CIA official. Conservative colunnist Robert Novak, who publicly exposed Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), was told by “a still-unnamed administration source” (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003) that Wilson’s wife “suggested him for the assignment,” leading Novak to uncover Plame Wilson’s identity. Toensing also claims that Novak was never asked not to publish Plame Wilson’s name in anything but the most “perfunctory” fashion (see (July 11, 2003) and Before July 14, 2003). Toensing defends her allegation by writing: “Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.” Toensing goes on to note that the CIA permitted Plame Wilson to make political contributions under the name “Wilson, Valerie E.,” contributions recorded by the Federal Elections Commission. Toensing concludes, “The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft,” and demands that Congress conduct an investigation into the CIA’s conduct. [Wall Street Journal, 11/3/2005] The Journal does not inform its readers that Toensing was one of a group of lawyers and conservative activists who filed an amici curiae brief with the court asking that it overturn its decision to compel the testimony of two lawyers in the Plame Wilson investigation (see March 23, 2005).

Italian lawmaker Senator Massimo Brutti states that in January 2003 (see November 20, 2005) Italy’s military intelligence service, SISMI, warned the United States that its reporting (see March 25, 2002)
(see October 15, 2001)
(see February 5, 2002) on Iraq’s purported attempts to procure uranium from Niger were wrong. Brutti says he is not sure whether this warning was sent before or after President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). “At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy’s SISMI secret services) said that the dossier doesn’t correspond to the truth,” Sen. Massimo Brutti tells journalists after he and other lawmakers on a parliamentary commission were briefed by SISMI’s head, Nicolo Pollari, and Gianni Letta, a top aide to Premier Silvio Berlusconi. [Associated Press, 11/3/2005] Shortly after making the statement, Brutti calls the Associated Press and says these comments were made in error. There was no warning in January 2003, he says. He also says lawmakers were told during the briefing that Italian intelligence did not have “a role in the dossier that was supposed to have demonstrated that Iraq was in an advanced phase of possession of enriched uranium.”
[Associated Press, 11/3/2005; Reuters, 11/3/2005]

Bob Woodward, a reporter and managing editor for the Washington Post, is interviewed by the office of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Woodward has agreed to testify about being given the identity of covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see After October 28, 2005). Armitage, whom Woodward has not yet publicly identified, revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Woodward in June 2003 (see June 13, 2003). Woodward says Armitage did not realize that Plame Wilson’s CIA status was classified. [Washington Post, 11/16/2005]

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing his focus on the potential criminal actions of White House political strategist Karl Rove. According to lawyers involved in the Lewis Libby perjury investigation, Fitzgerald is abandoning inquiries into whether Rove lied to a grand jury about his role in the Plame Wilson identity leak, and his characterization of the involvement of President Bush in the leak. Now Fitzgerald is focusing on whether Rove tried to conceal from the grand jury a conversation he had with Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the week before Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was revealed (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003 and October 15, 2004). Fitzgerald is not sure Rove was fully forthcoming about the belated discovery of an internal e-mail in which he described the conversation with Cooper (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003 and March 1, 2004), and some within the investigation speculate that Rove may have perjured himself. White House officials have said that Rove will not be asked to leave the administration if he is not indicted. Democratic leaders in Congress have renewed their call for him to resign, reminding Bush of his pledge to demand the “highest ethical standards” from the members of his administration. [New York Times, 11/4/2005] Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, will point to a casual conversation between himself and journalist Viveca Novak as proof that Rove did not deliberately lie about the conversation with Cooper (see March 1, 2004). However, a source familiar with the case tells reporters that Rove had informed Luskin about the Cooper conversation even before his first testimony to the grand jury in February 2004 (see February 2004). Rove then told the jury that he did not remember speaking with Cooper about Plame Wilson. According to the source, Fitzgerald finds it suspicious that Rove did not find the e-mail until after he had subpoenaed Cooper to testify before his grand jury (see May 21, 2004). [Washington Post, 12/3/2005]

Conservative Washington lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey publish a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal defending the Bush administration, and specifically the indicted Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), for their actions in the Plame Wilson identity leak. No crime was committed, Rivkin and Casey allege, and no legal ethics were breached. Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA official was moot because, Rivkin and Casey write, “she was not a covert agent—a readily ascertainable fact that should have concluded special counsel Fitzgerald’s investigation almost as soon as it got underway” (see Fall 1992 - 1996). In fact, Rivkin and Casey write, exposing Plame Wilson’s role in her husband Joseph Wilson’s 2002 mission to Africa (see February 19, 2002, February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005) “was relevant to an accurate understanding of his later allegations against the administration.” In general, the lawyers state, it is not a crime to expose an intelligence official’s “classified” status, only genuine covert agents. Since Plame Wilson was not a covert agent, by Rivkin and Casey’s standards, no crime was committed in exposing her as a CIA official. And even had she been, they continue, certainly no damage could have been done by her exposure (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). When Wilson decided to publish his New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003), the lawyers write, he “eliminated whatever shreds of anonymity” Plame Wilson retained. The lawyers conclude that “the revelation of Ms. Plame [Wilson]‘s connection to the CIA was a public service, neither criminal nor unethical.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/4/2005]

Defense lawyers for Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005) indicate that they will shift their defense strategy. Not only will they claim that their client did not intentionally lie to either the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) or the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), they will attempt to impugn the credibility and the accuracy of the journalists who are expected to testify that they learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Libby, instead of the other way around, as Libby will likely claim. Three reporters—Judith Miller of the New York Times, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, and Tim Russert of NBC News—are expected to be the prime focus of the defense’s efforts. It is unclear whether any of the reporters will testify voluntarily, or will resist efforts to have them testify before the jury. [Wall Street Journal, 11/7/2005]

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas writes a profile of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who is now suspected of leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Thomas writes that he doubts either Cheney or Libby were “conspiring to trash” former ambassador Joseph Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA officer. Instead, Thomas writes, “it is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic. It’s also a good bet that they did not foresee the disastrous consequences of their conversation (see (June 12, 2003)), as well as a series of others between Libby and government officials and several reporters in the summer of 2003. Libby, as well as his boss, operated, at least in their own minds, on a higher plane.” Thomas paints Libby as committed to “duty and honor,” and identifying with “Roman centurions and Plato’s Men of Silver, idealized guardians who cared nothing for celebrity or money but lived only to serve.” Libby idealizes former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and has compared Cheney to Churchill, who defied English politicians in the 1930s to agitate against the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler. So, too, is Cheney taking definitive action against the rising threat of Islamist terrorism, Thomas writes, and Libby is determined to assist him. Outing Plame Wilson was “foolish” and centered in “hubris,” Thomas notes, but puts it down to Libby’s “heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history,” and his going over the line in service to his country. “[I]t is… likely that Libby was caught up in an ancient trap of the best and the brightest,” Thomas writes, “the belief that they do not have to play by normal rules when they serve a higher calling, and that small lies can be told to protect higher truths.” [Newsweek, 11/7/2005]

The Village Voice’s Sydney Schanberg castigates Washington Post reporter and managing editor Bob Woodward for his behavior in the Plame Wilson investigation. Schanberg is referring to Woodward’s repeated attacks on the investigation and his support for the Bush administration (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, and October 27, 2005). He is as yet unaware of Woodward’s status as a recipient of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see June 13, 2003 and November 14, 2005). Woodward is a rightful icon of investigative journalism due to “the groundbreaking shoe-leather reporting he and Carl Bernstein did on the Watergate scandal in 1972” (see June 15, 1974). Now, though, Schanberg writes, he has become just another well-connected Washington insider. “Doesn’t Woodward remember the reaction by many in the White House press corps, who initially sneered at the [Watergate] story and brushed it off as the fevered product of two lowly cityside reporters covering crime and the courts—which is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the time? I wish I were wrong, but to me Woodward sounds as if he has come a long way from those shoe-leather days—and maybe on a path that does not become him. He sounds, I think, like those detractors in 1972, as they pooh-poohed the scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency—the scandal that Woodward and Bernstein doggedly uncovered.” Schanberg believes that Woodward has sacrificed his independence and his aggressive stance as an investigator in order to receive the unprecedented access to the White House and other Washington governmental agencies that he enjoys as a high-profile political author. “Critics in the press have suggested that Woodward is too close to some of his sources to provide readers with an undiluted picture of their activities,” Schanberg notes. “His remarks about the Fitzgerald investigation convey the attitude of a sometime insider reluctant to offend—and that is hardly a definition of what a serious, independent reporter is supposed to be. It’s a far piece from Watergate.” [Village Voice, 11/8/2005]

Time reporter Viveca Novak testifies in the Plame Wilson leak investigation. She and her lawyer, Hank Schuelke, meet in Schuelke’s office with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald agrees to limit his questioning to Novak’s conversations with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House political adviser Karl Rove (see March 1, 2004). In Novak’s later writing, she characterizes the questioning as “No fishing expeditions, no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case.” Fitzgerald says he wants to “remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body.” He asks general questions about when and how often Novak met with Luskin during the period from the fall of 2003 through the fall of 2004; Novak says they met about five times, but she took no notes from their meetings as Luskin did not speak as freely when she took notes. Then Fitzgerald gets to the “chicken bone,” asking if Luskin ever discussed Rove telling reporter Matthew Cooper that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Novak reveals the contents of her conversation with Luskin, and tells Fitzgerald that she believes the conversation may have occurred in May 2004, though she is not sure. As the meeting comes to an end, Fitzgerald tells her that he may want her to testify again, this time under oath. He does not foresee needing to bring her before his grand jury. Eight days later, Schuelke will inform Novak that Fitzgerald does indeed want her to testify under oath (see December 8, 2005). [Time, 12/11/2005]

The National Review publishes an editorial by Cesar Conda, an assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney from January 2001 to September 2003. Conda writes a glowing defense of indicted perjurer Lewis Libby, whom he worked with in Cheney’s office. Conda notes that he was not “personally close” to Libby, and says he has not spoken to him since December 2004. Conda claims no access to the Libby defense team, nor any knowledge of the Libby defense strategy. However, he writes, “I have my own observations of the man, and some commonsense arguments that should to be considered as they relate to the indictment.” Conda calls the portrayal of Libby in special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of him (see October 28, 2005) a “caricature” that “is utterly at odds with his professional and personal history.” Libby, Conda writes, “is honorable, discreet, selfless—a man of unquestionable integrity. Most of his professional career has been spent in public service, as a behind-the-scenes, yet invaluable staffer at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.” Libby served in Cheney’s office “at great personal sacrifice,” according to Conda, choosing to leave “a lucrative private law practice” and “compromis[ing] family time with his two grade-school children—to focus his energies on his all consuming job in the White House.” Conda goes into detail about Libby’s overwhelming workload, a key element of the Libby defense team’s “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). According to Conda, Libby should be expected to misremember some “fleeting” conversations he may have had with reporters about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s wife, CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, July 10 or 11, 2003, October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Conda claims that Wilson is at the heart of the Libby indictment, and accuses him of falsifying his report about the Iraq-Niger uranium hoax (see March 4-5, 2002 and July 6, 2003). Conda concludes by praising Libby as a man whose “noble” goal was “to protect the American people from terrorism.” [National Review, 11/10/2005]

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward testifies under oath in a sworn deposition to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald concerning his knowledge of the identity of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see December 30, 2003), and how he came upon that knowledge. Woodward testifies that he spoke “with three current or former Bush administration officials” in regards to his book Plan of Attack. He testifies for two hours under an agreement that he will only discuss matters specifically relevant to Fitzgerald’s investigation, and with written statements from each of the three administration officials waiving confidentiality “on the issues being investigated by Fitzgerald.” Woodward’s name came to Fitzgerald’s attention after one of the three officials, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, told Fitzgerald that he had revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Woodward (see June 13, 2003 and After October 28, 2005). In his story for the Post about his testimony, Woodward does not reveal Armitage’s identity, but it is soon disclosed by other sources (see March 14, 2006). Woodward spoke with a second administration official, whose identity he also does not disclose, and with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but says he did not discuss Plame Wilson with either Libby or the other official (see June 23, 2003). He testifies that he did not discuss Plame Wilson with any other government officials (see June 20, 2003) before Robert Novak publicly outed her on July 14 (see July 14, 2003). Woodward notes, “It was the first time in 35 years as a reporter that I have been asked to provide information to a grand jury.” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Washington Post, 7/3/2007] Investigative reporters for the progressive news Web site Raw Story identify National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as Woodward’s source for Plame Wilson’s identity, a claim echoed by the Times of London. Hadley refuses to answer questions on the topic. [Raw Story, 11/16/2005; London Times, 11/20/2005] In 2006, the National Security Council will refuse to directly deny Hadley’s involvement, and will request that Raw Story attribute denials to the White House and not to itself.) [Raw Story, 3/19/2006]Woodward Told Second Reporter about Plame Wilson - Woodward testifies that he told another reporter about Plame Wilson: “I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at the Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.” Pincus says he has no memory of Woodward telling him anything about Plame Wilson, and says he would certainly have remembered such a conversation, especially since he was writing about Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson, at the time (see June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, and (July 11, 2003)). “Are you kidding?” Pincus says. “I certainly would have remembered that.” Pincus believes Woodward is confused about the timing and the nature of their conversations; he remembers Woodward making a vague allusion to Plame Wilson in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. Pincus recalls Woodward telling him that he was not the only person who had been contacted. Libby Lawyer: Woodward's Testimony Undermines Case against Client - Lewis Libby’s lawyer, William Jeffress, says Woodward’s testimony undermines the case Fitzgerald is building against his client (see October 28, 2005). “If what Woodward says is so, will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this information to a reporter?” Jeffress says. “The second question I would have is: Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson’s wife?” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005]Plame Wilson 'Deeply Disappointed' in Woodward - In 2007, Plame Wilson will write, “I was deeply disappointed that [Woodward] had chosen to react as a journalist first and a responsible citizen only when his source ‘outed’ him to the special prosecutor.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 238]

Critics of the Bush administration, and of the reporters who helped push its narrative regarding the Iraq invasion, lambast Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for failing to reveal himself as a recipient of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see June 13, 2003, November 14, 2005, and November 16-17, 2005) while himself attacking the Plame Wilson investigation (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, and October 27, 2005). Joshua Micah Marshall writes that while the story of Woodward’s involvement remains “sketchy,” it appears “that Woodward—who has long been publicly critical of the Fitzgerald investigation—has been part of it from the beginning. Literally, the beginning.… At a minimum, though, Woodward seems to have some explaining to do, at least for the fact that he became an aggressive commentator on the leak story without ever disclosing his own role in it, not even to his editors.” [Talking Points Memo, 11/15/2005] The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum calls Woodward’s behavior “bizarre,” and says, “I can’t begin to make sense of this.” [Washington Monthly, 11/17/2005] The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz asks, “Who was this Shallow Throat, and why is this the first we’re hearing about it?” [Washington Post, 11/16/2005] Liberal author and blogger Jane Hamsher is particularly caustic in her criticism, writing: “Woodward stopped being a ‘journalist’ in the true sense of the word long ago—when he decided celebrity status and book sales meant more than the truth. He has gone from being—well, whatever he was, to something much worse: an official peddler of lies told by powerful people to whitewash their criminal activities.” [Jane Hamsher, 11/15/2005] And John Aravosis of the liberal AmericaBlog writes: “It’s also beginning to sound a lot like Bob Woodward is becoming our next Judith Miller (see October 16, 2005). His repeated rants in defense of this administration, and against the special prosecutor, certainly take on a very interesting edge considering Mr. Woodward didn’t bother disclosing that he was quite involved in this story, and was hardly the impartial observer his silence suggested he was. Not to mention, he knew all along that HE TOO had received the leak, suggesting that a clear pattern of multiple leaks was developing, yet he still went on TV and said that all of these repeated leaks were just a slip of the tongue?” (Emphasis in the original.) [John Aravosis, 11/15/2005]

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